Day 133 in Japan - Christmas shopping finished :)

Today was my first Japanese lesson in 3 weeks – I’ve had a break due to visitors. I didn’t have my normal teacher today (Kojima-sensei), but instead I had substitute conversation lesson with a nice man who works at the Akashi International Association. I ran into Deyi – the ALT who I share Akashi Shimizu teaching duties with – at the lesson. She has her JLPT level 4 test tomorrow, so she was getting in some last minute cramming. We ended up heading into Kobe for some clothes shopping. She is a shopping machine, and showed me all kinds of new places around Harborland to get lovely clothes. Unfortunately, she is a totally gorgeous girl who fits Japanese-sized clothes, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I wouldn’t fit anything in the stores she took me to (not in the ladies sections, at least). My poor ego took a bit of a battering, but it was nothing that a subsequent visit to McDonald’s couldn’t fix (<-- this bit is a joke).

Look - the "Sweden House" that has been under construction
 since we got here finally got it's scaffolding off today! Is it a
restaurant? A shop? Someone's house? Stay tuned... (we still don't know)

After she headed home to finish studying, I ended up doing a bunch more shopping, and actually finished all of my Christmas shopping. This is lucky, because I have to send the package off fairly quickly in order for it to reach my globe-travelling family before they leave for the Christmas holidays. I got home about 30 minutes before Sam, who immediately headed back out to his End-of-year work party. I had a quiet night of watching movies, listening to music and reading Harry Potter. Avoided the massive amount of housework we have piled up quite nicely, I think.

Sam stumbled back in the door a bit worse for wear at about 3:30 am. I heard a loud thump outside, and quietly crossed my fingers and wished that it wasn’t him, but alas it was followed about 45 seconds later by drunken stabbing-the-door-with-the-key noises. He was freezing cold, moaning like an idiot, and smelled like vomit. After an eventful few hours, I got both of us to bed by about 5:30 am, and now that I think about Sam still owes me a breakfast for that.

Food Highlight of the Day: I made a chicken salad for dinner with some awesome spices that Claire sent over with Mum and Dad. She really has the best taste of anyone I know, and the spices were no exception!