It all began in 1974. Christmas isn’t a national holiday in Japan, and although these days the commercial aspect of Christmas is a pretty big deal, back then it was just business as usual really. The story goes that westerners in Japan found themselves missing turkey dinners at Christmas, as a turkey is notoriously hard to find in Japan. So they made do with fried chicken from KFC instead.

The PR people of KFC Japan pounced on this, and transformed the colonel into a version of Santa, and boom, thanks to some opportunistic marketing and a clever ad campaign, the tradition of ‘kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!’ or ‘Kentucky for Christmas!’ was born. Today, KFC’s most profitable time of the year by far is December, with wait times for Christmas Colonel lasting as long as two hours.

I’ve been fascinated by this tradition for years, and wanted to explore it further, but merely trying it wasn’t enough. I had to live it. I had to eat nothing but KFC chicken for a week. Why? Well, why not? I spent a week eating nothing but Nutella once, and I didn’t die (kind of), surely this would be fine.

Check out the full story of this challenge at Tokyo Survival Challenge.

Disclaimer: This challenge was done at the end of December 2019, before the escalation and the stay home recommendations were made. TSC recommends that people stay home as much as possible to stop/slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus… and catch up on reading about some great challenges in the meantime!