In Japan, Christmas just isn't Christmas without butter. That's because the Japanese love to celebrate Christmas Eve with "Christmas cakes," which are filled with whipped cream (生奶油) and topped with strawberries. Making this tasty treat requires some serious amounts of butter. But this year, the creamy golden spread is in short supply on the island nation.
In fact, many Japanese supermarkets are fresh out of dairy (milk) products entirely. Those that do still have butter often limit shoppers to one box apiece, and the price for that box is much higher than normal.
Northern Japan has been suffering unusually old winters in recent years, and all of Japan has had to endure (忍受) hotter summers. This extreme weather has stressed out the nation's dairy cows. They have not been able to produce their expected amount of milk.
However, even before the bad weather, Japan's butter supply was in trouble. The number of dairy farms in the country has been steadily shrinking. Not many young people in Japan want to become dairy farmers anymore.
The demand for dairy products in Japan has also been falling. The Japanese diet consists mainly of rice and seafood, and it often doesn't require many milk products. So the government decided to cut back the number of the country's dairy cows in 2007. This led to a butter shortage in 2008 as well as the current shortage.
The Japanese government has tried to increase the stock of butter by importing (进口) about 10,000 tons from overseas. But even this emergency supply has done little to end the shortage this Christmas season.
Blogger Audrey Akcasu says Japanese people are using substitutes in their cooking or paying more money for real butter.
"Some bakeries are choosing to replace butter with margarine (人造黄油) this year, claiming the slight change in taste will be less noticeable than the potential higher price we would see if they used imported butter," she writes in Nikkan Gendai, a Japanese newspaper. "But for many shoppers, it'11 have to be margarine or nothing this Christmas."
