Christmas Day in Japan is an unusual affair. Sam and I woke up with no other family around, and then Sam had to go to work at 10. We made ourselves the traditional Christmas breakfast (Bacon and egg sandwich with tomato sauce), and then Sam headed off while I started making the pastry for the mince pies I wanted to make for our Gaijin Christmas lunch. I made a batch of pastry and a LOT of mess. There was flour all over the kitchen, I used every piece of cookware, the blender, half of our cutlery and ended up with buttery dough up to my elbows. But I eventually got together about 24 mince pies, cooked in two batches in our tiny microwave oven, and they turned out OK - it was a Christmas miracle!
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| The chaos begins. |
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| Batch number 1, with my awesome Chrismtas hat from Sam's mum (thanks!) |
For lunch, I met with a few other ALTs at Jodie's place in Gakkuentoshi (northern-ish, western-ish Kobe). We met Jodie's brother, Carl (the tall blonde dude) who just arrived from Perth yesterday. Jodie made some fantastic sushi (she even made the tamagoyaki - Japanese-style omelette - that is inside the sushi). We played Scrabble - Jodie and Rob are serious Scrabble competitors - and streamed UK radio over the internet, so we listen to England waking up on Christmas day. Jodie has a lovely place, and it was really nice and cosy and a friendly way to feel like a part of a little family on Christmas.
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| Christmas with the Craig's :) |
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JODIE MADE THIS. Just casually, like "Oh yeah, I do this all the time."
She just whipped it up out of nowhere. |
After a lovely afternoon staying warm with friends, we ventured out into the cold again. This time we headed to the Hobgoblin - my favourite Kobe English-style pub. They were doing a turkey roast dinner, and so a group of 12-13 of us met up for a traditional Christmas. Well, traditional-ish. The dinner was fantastic, the company was great, and to top off everything... we had a White Christmas. It started to snow while we were eating dinner, so we watched snow whirling and dancing outside the window while we ate turkey and drank cider, and talked and enjoyed ourselves immensely.
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| Christmas Dinner. |
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| Merry Christmas night! |
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| A real white Christmas. |
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| The Hobgoblin at Christmas. |
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| Some of my dinner companions - Carl, Nao, Deyi, Hiro-chan and Rob. |
After dinner, we went for one last traditional Christmas pursuit - Christmas karaoke. We sang all kinds of Christmas carols and Christmas pop songs (All I Want for Christmas, Last Christmas etc.). Then we headed home on the train. If you want to keep the thoughts of a Happy Christmas in your head, skip the next paragraph...
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| Christmas Charaoke Chrew! |
OK, that one last Christmas event... I caught the train home with most of the people in that picture above. We were chatting all the way back on the 40 minute train ride from Kobe, and I started to feel a bit uncomfortable and hot. I undid my jacket, but by Akashi (two stops from our house) I felt really crappy. I didn't want to get off, because it was the last train. So I told Sam I felt bad, and put my arm around him. We got to Nishi-Akashi (one stop from our house), and I thought "only 4 mins to go". 3 minutes to go. 2 minutes to go. And then I felt dizzy and don't remember anything until I woke up like I was waking up from a dream. I was sitting on the floor of the train, and everyone was looking horrifiedly at me. I had fainted, slumped down on the floor and started twitching. Then I realised the last, horrifying detail. My pants were wet. I had wet myself. A lot. It was running almost the entire length of the carriage. Thankfully the doors opened to our station right then, so I muttered a goodbye, assured my friends I was OK, and ran off the train. I have never had a more embarrassing thing happen to me EVER. I felt shaky and bad, and it was a crappy ending to a lovely day.
So overall, it was a nice Christmas, but a little weird. I missed my family and friends, and Australia. But I was lucky to be surrounded by lovely and caring (and concerned) friends. It was a nice reminder that everywhere there are nice people, and that my life here is pretty happy. With patches of weirdness.
Food Highlight of the Day: Roast Turkey Dinner.
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