KOBE (Kyodo) In the spirit of this Christmas season, the large Santa outside a popular old Western-style house in Kobe's Kitano district brought an unconventional gift: a box of Tamiflu.
The 3.5-meter Santa Claus doll hangs from the exterior of Uroko no Ie (House of Scales), which was built around 1905 as a rental house for rich foreign residents and is now open to tourists, who routinely flock to the district.
This year, Santa is wearing a surgical mask and at the top of his sack a box of flu medicine can be glimpsed, echoing people's fear of swine flu, which has already infected more than 10 million people nationwide.
"We'd like people to enjoy a quiet Christmas without catching diseases," said a manager of the house.
