A Christmas Letter from Tokyo

Dear Mama, it’s Christmas here in Texas

And I hope the winter’s treating you okay I saw the lights

go up along the highway

And thought about our street back home today

Do you still put the little tree beside the window?

Does Papa still complain about the cold?

I can almost hear the kettle in the kitchen

And smell the dinner that I knew so well

I’m sending you a Christmas letter from Tokyo

Well, that’s where my heart goes every year I’m thousands of miles

away tonight

But somehow home still feels so near I may be living underneath

a Texas sky

But part of me

will always know

Christmas starts with where you came from And mine still starts in

Tokyo

I remember waking up before the sunrise

Trying hard to see what Santa brought

We didn’t have a winter full of snowflakes

But we had everything a kid could want

The streets were bright beneath the winter moonlight

Neighbors passing underneath the lights And I never knew how much those

days would mean

Until I found myself remembering tonight

I used to think that leaving meant goodbye

That every road away would take me farther

But the older that I get,

the more I find

You don’t leave home when home lives in your heart

So tell Papa I’ve got his old guitar still The one he

said I’d never learn to play

And tell him I’ve been playing it on Christmas Just like he

taught me all those years ago

And Mama, if you look outside your window

Maybe you’ll see the same moon that I see

Different streets beneath it,

different country

But it’s shining down on both of us tonight

I’m sending you a Christmas letter from Tokyo

Though I’m writing from a thousand miles away I can see those

old familiar streets tonight Like I never really left that place I

may be living underneath a Texas sky

But part of me will always know

Christmas starts with where you came from And mine still starts in

Tokyo

So Merry Christmas, Mama

Merry Christmas, Papa

I’ll see you in my dreams tonight.

Love, Kenji. (hmmmmm)