It is now Boxing Day and I am back at work. As always I am a bit sleepy. I don’t have too many classes today, only three in fact. Because tomorrow is the last day of school, I don’t have to do any school related planning. I can just fill my day with studying, emailing, desk organization and so forth. I have been out of town and out of the house so much lately that I haven’t had time to get much done so it is nice to use this as a personal organization day. I have been doing a lot of cooking classes and am thankful they are now over. I enjoyed them for the most part and learned to do them in a more relaxed manner though. One of the elementary schools even invited me to do a repeat performance. They want me to teach the kids to make bread. I will wait until the New Year to explain that bread must be cooked in an oven, which we definitely do not have. It could work though. My food poisoning victims have made a full recovery. I went back to that school to do the same lesson with grade one kids. They really enjoyed it. It was a bit strange though because they still slightly suspect me of the food poisoning so they insisted that we partially burn most of the cooks to be completely sure they were finished. I don’t know what is wrong with these people. So the kids took a plate of burned cookies down to our principal and some people who were there for a meeting. They explained all about the cookies but added a reminder that because they were burnt they were probably not delicious and then trooped out again. (Demo oishikunai!) Good work kiddies.
Other recent events include the birthday of Dad and Aunt Donna. I think a lovely birthday was had by all parties. I wish I could have been there. I celebrated the event with my night class students from the Dental hospital. They didn’t know it though. It was actually a Christmas/end of the year party. We had Chinese food at one of the hospital’s restaurants. I ate some weird stuff including turtle and shark. I am happy that my night classes are on hold for at least two weeks now. It is good to have a break from everything. Gisela and Tom left on the weekend for their respective holidays. Gisela headed off on her 50 hour trek to Cape Town and Tom headed down to the sunny shores of Australia. We all went out for food and drinks on Friday. The evening was organized by Tom for his karate club. I got to come as an extra. After this, we went through to Matsumoto to visit our favourite haunts and then caught a cab home in the wee hours. The next day we consumed a variety of cakes at Tom’s house then Luke, Dec and myself caught the train to Tokyo. We all had a bit of shopping to do. I wanted to go ice skating at an outdoor rink and see some nice illuminations. We went to see the lights but they seemed quite weird and tacky. My students advised me to see the ones in Ebisu district. The feature there was a large chandelier made by the French Crystal maker Baccarat. Lots of people were there to see it. It didn’t feel very Christmassy. Christmas is like Valentine’s Day in this country for some reason. I wanted to shout at everyone “You not Christian! This holiday means nothing to you!”. They have all of the build up in the retail way with no actual holiday to back it up. There are lights up everywhere and Christmas music playing in the streets but when the actual day came along and we said Merry Christmas to people, they didn’t respond properly at all. There is none of the joy and goodwill. There is only loads of fried chicken and slab cake. That is what is popular to eat at Christmas here. You buy the equivalent to a birthday cake and a few pieces of KFC style fried chicken. Weirdos! I have a picture here of a japanese couple feeding fried chicken to their dog who is wearing a santa suit. That should give you some indication of what is wrong with the holidays in the this country. We did see the Japanese Salvation Army out playing in brass quartets. I don’t know anything about their organization here so I wonder very much if they are just imitating a western image of Christmas or if they are the real thing. Anyways, we saw what there was to see in the Christmas department and then went out to dinner (Korean) and club (Womb). Not sure if anyone actually knows the meaning of the club name as there is all kinds of English used on things that people don’t’ necessarily know the meaning of. It is like when people at home get a kanji tattoo without really knowing what it means. It just looks cool sometimes to use English. It took us a long time to find the club because they have some kind of quite rule for the outside of it. It is in a somewhat residential part of town and so they have club staff standing outside asking people to come and go in almost complete silence. This would never work at home. There would be people fighting and yelling and swearing all night long. It was also so strange to think of it as a quiet zone because the inside of the club was so loud. We were quite lucky that night because there were three back to back amazing DJs. The second one I had actually heard of before and had listened to. It was James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. He was followed by a really awesome guy DJing for The Yes. He was great! The club was huge and filled to capacity. We danced for about 5 solid hours packed in with about 2000 other club goers. It felt like we were all one giant person jumping together. Everyone was waving their arms and glistening with sweat. We just collapsed on the floor and couldn’t get up around 4:30 in the morning but the club was still going. We eventually dragged ourselves outside to find a love hotel where we could sleep for a few hours and have a shower. The area we were in was pretty loaded with them but every single one was already full. If you don’t know what love hotels are and can’t figure it out from the name, google it. They are quite convenient when you are exhausted and just want a few hours kip before the morning. We couldn’t get in though and Luke had to catch the first train back to Shiojiri at about 7 that morning so we just sleep for an hour of two in an internet place. I don’t really want to be doing that but we were running low on options. Next time we will plan our trip more than three hours in advance so that we can make a booking somewhere. We woke up when the stores opened and finished up our Christmas shopping and headed for home. Unfortunately, due to some ridiculous dilly dallying by the ticket counter people and problems with the ticket reader we missed our train home by seconds. We ran the last 200 metres or so just to watch it pull away. We were not in a mental state to handle this so we just threw our bags down and beat our fists on the platform to the dismay and fear of the Japanese people around us. We got home eventually though and I spent Christmas Eve at Dec’s in Kiso. I headed back up on Christmas morning as he had to work on Christmas. Luke and I spent the rest of the day cooking a fabulous Christmas dinner together for all of our friends. About 10 people gathered in Luke’s apartment that he generously offered after it became clear that we had no other premises for the event. He has a lovely welcoming place and we enjoyed a variety of great foods. I cooked a chicken at my house and we made the rest of the stuff at Luke’s place. I made my own dressing by stir-frying it. I love dressing and will be making that again for myself. I also made a trifle for the first time. I couldn’t find sherry but it was still good. After dinner we collapsed into the post eating coma. It really felt like Christmas then in a way that was completely missing in Tokyo. Gisela called late at night and told me things were wonderful there and she was delighted to be home for an almost one month holiday.
I hope you all had a good Christmas and are enjoying the holiday season. I really love this time of year. I am sorry some of your cards and gifts will be more like Epiphany presents than Christmas but the time slipped away from me. Thank you so much to all of you who sent me great gifts and cards. I saved them all till Christmas day. There is still some more stuff for me to pick up at the post office today which is great! Ok, I have really carried on here so I will close it here. I am going on a holiday next week for 5 days so I will let you all know how that goes. I am greatly looking forward to it. Also a happy birthday to my brother Kort where ever you may be. Lastly here are my cats Jack and Vic enjoying the holidays. Soon I will stay home too! Have a happy New Years everyone!