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Christmas in Japan

Did you ever know that Colonel Sanders looks just like Santa Claus?

They sure do here, as is evident by this striking photo taken at YouMe Town. “Kentuck” *KFC* is the forerunner in the lucrative Christmas fried chicken business. What you see to the right of the jolly Southerner are the order forms for your most “finger-lickin’ good” of Christmas fares.

Christmas isn’t the same type of holiday that it is in the western hemisphere. It’s not a huge occasion marked by traditional foods, family gatherings and Christmas specials on TV for an entire week. It’s marked by obnoxious Christmas decorations, bizarre selections of Christmas tunes, friends, lovers, and…fried chicken, cake and champagne?!? Well, why the hell not, I say!

I mean, I’m going to need a lot of champagne to counter the thoughts of what I’m missing back in the States (or Canada…I’m not picky…roundtrip ticket anyone?). Thank goodness I bought all that Martinelli’s sparkling cider yesterday at Costco! I’m going to get drunk on life! Woo! Who needs alcohol when you’ve got…well, work. I (big surprise) don’t get a day off for Christmas. It’s a time for teachers to take off a little 年休-> “nenkyuu” *paid holiday*, but I’m saving up for warmer times. I’ll probably just take a bottle of my sparkling cider to work and work tons hard on stuff. Like reading that Japanese book aimed at 12-year-olds. I’m a moron when it comes to understanding Japanese. Stupid. Dumb. Moron. Good thing the holidays are so much fun here! No family, no fudge, no proper Christmas songs on the radio, no Grama complaining that the gravy didn’t turn out well at all (even though it always rocks), no giblets in said gravy (and when I was just starting to get used to them too!), no turkey, no festive spirit in the air, no nothing! Only pure commercialism.

And fried chicken.

Where’s that Martinelli’s?

I’m Doing my Part to Battle Japanese Christmas!

Well, not totally.

But I’ve still done what I’ve could with the resources provided.

I decided to make a gingerbread house about two weeks ago. One week of prep, one week of construction, and now I’m finally finished! My first gingerbread house!

Here’s my Christmas tree. In lieu of proper personal ornaments, I used cellphone charms. My, I never realized I had amassed so many in such a short time! I even added a few extra shrine charms that I wasn’t using. The one draped over the star is for fortune. Others around the tree are for happiness, dreams coming true, and success in studying.  Under the tree are gifts for myself that I haven’t yet wrapped.

Here are my outdoor Christmas lights. Very bright, blinky, and, I’m sure, quite obnoxious to my neighbors. Totally in proper American style (they do have bright blinky lights on some houses here, but they tend to focus their obnoxiousness on the sides of the houses that don’t disrupt another person’s sleeping habits).

Here’s a stocking I got during a present swap. I wanted one anyways, and this one blinks! It’s tastefully placed between the Pirates of the Caribbean poster and my Disney Princesses sparkly puzzle. Go sparkles!

Anyways, there are other little things, but… Yeah…

Stuff I’m Doing to Kill the Boredom

I’ve started catching back up on my Penny Arcade reading. If you are an impressionable young child, don’t click on the link. Your parents would kill me. Then there’d be no fascinating blog to keep you entertained . Because I’d be dead. All because of you. Don’t click on the link, Diana!

Anyways, as I was saying…Penny Arcade. Good times.

And now I want to start a webcomic.

Oh wait, no. The feeling passed.

To spite Christmas, I opened up my printer/scanner/copier today. It was my intention all along. I really didn’t want to wrap it anyways. I’m so freaking excited to start scanning things. Woo, scanning! Maybe I will start a webcomic!

No, the feeling passed again.

How about some randomness from time to time? I like that. Randomness suits me fine, in case you hadn’t noticed about the frequency of my blog posts.

I don’t really know why I started writing this blog. Another boredom buster, I guess, perhaps to get out the frustration of another day of not posting two blog drafts. I need to upload images for them to be complete, but of course I’m only remembering when I’m at work, and not at the home computer.

If only I had as much free time at home as I do at work. Perhaps I’ll get that wish as soon as my long-term visitor leaves, apparently in a week. Apparently. I’ll believe it when it happens.

Oh, damnable frustration! I’ll deal with that imagery issue tonight and finally be done with it!

Perhaps.

My Christmas Wishlist

My uncle brought up the question of what I wanted from the States. I thought I’d just be generic and let you all know what I want for Christmas. And maybe why, too.

Pants that fit me!

• Japan makes me feel like an Amazon, which is good…until I’m at a department store.

Pretty shoes that fit me!

• It’s a shame that all the awesome-looking women’s shoes only go up to 25cm. I’m totally denied at a rough 26/26.5cm (I’m a 9 1/2 in the States). At least I can fit my giant clown feet into men’s shoes.

Seat-Warmer for my frigid toilet room.

• It’s called a toilet room because that’s all that’s in there, and because I really feel that the room with the bath should be called the bathroom. As for the nice Canadian “washroom”? That should be for the room with the full sink. It’s like I have three rooms for North America’s one!
• Toilet seat attachments are popular here. Why else would my tiny little toilet room, with less room than your average public toilet stall, have an electrical outlet in it?

13″ Macbook

• Why? Well, I already have a monster 17″ mac powerbook, but after three and a half years, it is starting to ponder the meaning of life instead of doing what I tell it to do in a prompt fashion. There’s also the issue of it being larger and heavier than I care to tote around with me anymore. Either way, it’ll be a nice balance…and I’ll be able to run my PC software on it (in other words, the stuff my phone needs…the high megapixel camera function and mp3 capabilities are useless without it). Good times!

Nintendo Wii

• That I even need to explain this request is silly. I don’t yet know if the Wii is region specific (probably), though I’ll most likely just suffer through the Japanese *read “incomprehensible”* version of the latest installment to the Zelda line, “Twilight Princess”. I’ll just do what I am doing with Final Fantasy XII: reading the translation online. The voices are gorgeous, but…I don’t know if it’s an accent or what, but all I hear is beautiful garble.

Printer/Scanner

I got this for myself for Christmas.  Going to wrap it and put it under the tree!  …if I can stand the anticipation of having to wait a week for printing and scanning heaven!

• To print out the translations of all my Japanese games. Harhar. But seriously though! It’ll definitely make my lesson planning less of a headache when I don’t have to rush to my middle school to print something off before heading to elementary school (not fun). My old scanner is dearly missed, because it’s what I used to get my line art on the comp for coloring jobs. Now I just sigh and pace my room all day. It’s quite sad, really. If only I had a printer/scanner combo. *crycry*

Washer/Dryer combo

• That would be so freaking sweet. No one has separate dryers here, and most only have washing machines. For this reason, even the highest-class apartments look slightly tacky, what with all the mottled assortment of laundry on the balconies. Either way, it’s either seethingly humid here, or rainy, or gross, or cold, or maybe I don’t feel like hanging out clothes in the morning before going to work. Maybe I just hate draping clothing all over my furniture when it’s bad weather. Maybe I’m just a lazy American hater. Maybe what’s so wrong with a machine that washes your clothes, then turns around and drys them?

My Hermione costume

• because I’m a big freaking dork
• because I TOTALLY could have won the costume contest on Halloween if I had that, and who knows when the situation might again arise

A puppy

• I want a puppy!
• I won’t be too picky…so long as they don’t look too freakish…unless it’s in a charming, and not overbred, way.

Chinese Buffet!

• It’s one of the first places I’m going to eat at when I visit The States…along with Chipotle, and Taco Bueno, and Bill and Ruth’s Subs (their burgers rock at the location near my grandmother’s house!).

Cream cheese that isn’t hard and cottage cheese that’s in a container larger than a yogurt cup.

• seriously though, is that really too much to ask for?

Free round trip tickets to Tulsa, Florida, and/or Halifax

• gotta see my relatives

Did You Notice?

I’ve added another page to my site.

For some reason (maybe because what I’ve been left with is a tiny jungle of patchy weeds), I’ve decided to try at some good old-fashioned gardening in December.  Believe it or not, the weather is equivalent to Oklahoma’s October.  There hasn’t been a frost here yet.  Leaves are still changing.  Everyone is busting out the decorative kale, and, heck, so might I…if I ever tame (read as “pull”) the weeds in my scraggly driveway/yard.  Anyways, I’ll be writing a sorta-kinda blogish thingy on the page to document my progress.

So, does that mean that I need to document the progress of my other current hobbies?  Perhaps.

A hobbies page.  Where I tell all of you about my puzzle and Miffy plate-collecting pasttimes (that’s right, I just got another Miffy plate!).

I’ll get back to you on this new idea.

Loose Change

I have a little change purse that I got in Kyoto.  It looks like a cute little sleeping green owl.  Either way, I only remember to put change into it half the time, so money collects in my wallet pouch too.

The whole point of this is that I consolidated everything back into the little owl wallet at school (keeping busy!) and found out that I have ￥2133 in change.  That’s a very rough $18 US.  This is actually not an extremely high number (I’d just call it “nice”).  Canadians out there can agree with me on how much your change can add up.  You tote around loonies ($1 coins named after the loon image found on one of the sides) and toonies ($2 coins named after…i don’t know…that it’s a two, and that it rhymes with “loonie”?) in lieu of paper money of those denominations in Canada.  Here, you tote around ￥100 (~$1)　and ￥500 (~$5) coins.  There are also ￥50 coins here that are used far more frequently than half-dollar coins ever were in the US or Canada.  The trade-off is that there are no quarters.  Right, and they rarely use ￥2000 bills (I only saw one once, and it was given to my friend from the bank when he cashed in his travellers checks…probably to humor him).  Terribly reminiscent of the ol’ $2 American bill.

I wonder if it’s treated the same as in the States…brought out by grandparents to wow little grandchildren, though it probably doesn’t make as cheap a gift as a two dollar bill.

I’m bored at work, and it’s not quite 10 yet.

Guess I’ll go…study or something.

Oh You Little Fishies!

*This was something conducted a few weeks ago, but only now have decided to share my story with you.  Be brave.*

So, I see these little fishies at the supermarket and think “I could eat those!”. So, this is how I go about it:

I have no clue what to do, so I decide to batter them up like I do when I’m making tonkatsu.

Good times with panko!

Don’t they look all warm and happy?

And by the way, the heads aren’t all that tasty, amazingly. I eventually stopped trying to hide the taste with tonkatsu sauce and just cut the buggers off.

Here they were in final form. They were an interesting side dish to the spaghetti I also made.

I would never have tried this in the States. In the States I’d be horiffied at finding a bone in any type of fish product. Now I eat around, remove, or eat them (they say if a bone gets stuck in your throat, just eat a healthy portion of rice and it’ll go right down). And fish heads? Though I still don’t really know why people eat them here, I am no longer afraid of the situation arising *such as at my last enkai -business drinking party-*again…to an extent.

I’m Still Alive! Driving, Costco, and the Police…All With a Happy Ending!

A question to my fellow bloggers: Do you ever have so much to say that you have to ponder how to go about posting it all? Do you ever ponder so long that it becomes old news and you end up never posting it?

Yeah, so I didn’t take a nose dive into the first rice field I came upon in my new car. As a matter of fact, the only excitement experienced was a few jolting stops while trying out the brakes (they work great, by the way) and the obnoxious habit of flipping on the windshield wipers instead of the intended left turn signal (oops, other side!). The four months of riding my bike on the left side of the road has made the left-side driving a very easy one. Not having a manual transmission is oddly liberating, though I keep thinking that the car is going to die when I slow it down very much. On occasion, my right hand has grabbed at nothing for a moment near the wheel when getting ready to role, and I’m guessing it’s looking for the automatic…whatsitcalled…stick thingie near the wheel that was in Mom’s van that I, on very rare occasions, drove.

Here’s an ok pic. Appreciate the Christmas Stitch hanging from my rear-view mirror (I won it at an arcade over the weekend). Also appreciate the green arrow magnet on its front. It means I’m a new driver. I think you’re required to have them on your car for a year after you get your license, but mine…is just a warning to others. The same magnet is also on the back of the car. Doesn’t it just match wonderfully with the red?

Costco

I initiated my car by planning a trip to Costco. With two friends, I headed out in my little gnat-sized car. We sped down the *very expensive* toll roads at an incredible 80 kph (that’s what, about 50 mph?). It felt so fast, and yet it was so slow… Speeds are deceptive when the cars are so small. Local highway speeds are only 50kph…about 30mph! That’s crazy talk! And yet…when you’re driving something as powerful as a lawnmower… Yeah, you’re flying.

Anyways, we got so turned around, and overshot places on the map so frequently *what looked like a 20 minute drive was about, what…3 minutes?* …it was hours until we finally found the place. But we did! I bought many important things, such as a big bag of Nacho Cheezier Doritos, a 10-can pack of Cream of Mushroom soup, an 8-can pack of black beans *oh yeah*, a bag of 50 tulip bulbs, a 25-pack of sharpies, an 8-pack of albacore tuna packed in water (not oil, the reason why I bought it), random Christmas decorations, a block of real cheese, a box of low-fat popcorn, a big tin of poppycock, cheese bratwursts, and two HUGE cans of Campbell’s New England Clam Chowder. I also got a big slice of pizza that tastes like…pizza. I like the pizza you can get in Japan, but you really shouldn’t compare it with it’s American cousin.

Keisatsu *police*

It was midnight by the time we came back to Yoshii. Deciding (I’m sure quite correctly) that I wouldn’t get up early enough to make myself some breakfast (I never do), I stopped at Lawson, the local combini, for an onigiri *rice ball* for the morn (had to settle for a ham sandwich…). My friend made a comment about how there was some kind of sting going on at the next door Geo (pronounced “gay-o”), and when I looked, there were about seven police officers standing outside of its doors. I went to my car to leave, and next thing I know, all the officers are at my car, and the head police man is asking if I know any Japanese. I give my generic “just a little” response. He asked if my friend and I were married. Since it was a vocabulary word I rarely used, it took about two seconds to clue in to the question. The reaction was a bit intense, all shaking my head, saying “nonono, he’s my friend!”. Said friend seemed to be explaining the same thing on the other side too. Next, he asked me for my alien registration card and license *technically licenses, since I have to have both my US one and the international driver’s permit for me to legally drive* while the other six officers practically surround my little vehicle. He asked me why I was in the area. “I live here”, I said. He asked me if I was an English teacher. I said yes. My friend was being grilled with the same questions. My cop asked if it was alright if he looked in my car. I said “sure”. He asked again once more to make sure it was really alright (I’m noticing that it’s polite Japanese form at times when they feel like they’re causing a huge imposition). I wasn’t worried about the contents of my car, and it was so nice and clean still, so I went over to the other side of the car to be helpful with a bit of language translation.

Let me add now that I was so exhausted from the entire trip that I wasn’t feeling any apprehension or nervousness at all. I was actually quite relaxed and carefree, if I do say so myself. The conversations between me and the police officers were nothing but happiness and delightful.

The main police guy came up to me again and asked for my home address. After that was over, he said “You’re probably wondering why we’re doing this?”. Yes, of course I was. He told me. I didn’t understand the verbs he was using. He tried again. Still no comprehension (besides that it involved a foreigner on a phone). He then thought a bit about it, and decided to act it out. I’m still not too sure, but it seemed to involve selling things (such as my necklace that he pointed at) to people, and, amazingly, getting money in return. Not exactly a detailed account. While friend was dealing with communication issues, main cop asked conversationally if I had been doing some Christmas shopping. I sure had. He said that we were definately not the people they were looking for, but would hold onto the information anyways. He then said, in English, “I’m sorry.” It was a bit weird to have a police officer apologizing to me for what I considered to be a routine “we’re looking for shifty gaikokujin in a small rural town. Hey, there’re two over there!”. I mean, if the descriptions they had of the people were “doesn’t look Japanese”, we definately fit the bill! Anyways, I was all, “it’s ok!”, and he said again, very solemnly, “I’m sorry.” He said it once more for impact. So, three sorrys from the main police guy. That doesn’t happen often…’specially not from where I’m from. We’re free to go, so I get in the car, and wonder why all the officers are having a conversation right next to the back of my car…do they want to see if I’ll tap them on the way out? I manage to pull out without nicking anyone (though I was just informed that someone reminded the main officer to move out of the way as I was wanting to move back), and, I swear to god, as I drive past them one of the police men waves a cheery goodbye to me.

The level of polite and happy these officers were experiencing must have been a small-town experience where they realize that they may have just stumbled upon the town’s reclusive ALT.

The ALT who most likely teaches their children.

It was all a fun romp for my first weekend out with my little turbo-powered kei car! I wonder what will happen next week!

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