Carols, Christmas Cake and another Cute Cushion

So about Christmas. I had to work on Christmas day, which was a new experience, and I have to admit I was pretty depressed that morning. Christmas is a huge deal in my family, and nearly everyone in Takayama had returned home or had flown-off someplace warm for the holidays. It was rather difficult waking up alone on Christmas morning and then heading off to work. I don't recommend it. However, things picked up considerably that afternoon when I got together with the few remaining ALTs - all of us Canadian - and sang Christmas carols at a local hospital in red Santa hats and white beards. The patients could have cared less but we certainly cheered ourselves up! Then we all met at M's house for a rather non-traditional dinner of Christmas sushi. It was lovely! (We all met up again a few days later for a second attempt at Christmas dinner, this one more traditional and decidedly Canadian. The menu included: a crazy amount of appetizers, including pate from Spain, fresh guacamole - courtesy of moi - and a cream cheese salmon/shrimp spread, roast chicken, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatos, yams, 2 tortierres !!!, salad, rolls, oranges, maple sugar pie, and christmas cake. Oh, and there was mulled wine, beer, plum wine and sake. Everything, minus the crackers and pate, was homemade and everything was deliriously delicious. We all rolled home)

Christmas in Japan is interesting: decorations go up and carols start playing by the beginning of November, all in English, of course. Santas and Christmas trees are everywhere, as are tacky home light displays. But Christmas isn't a holiday, most families don't really have trees or stockings, and children get one gift from their parents if they get anything at all. The only 'tradition' that the Japanese seem to have is the ordering and eating of a Christmas Cake. In Japan, this means a sweet, vanilla cake piled high with lots of sugary frosting, strawberries and little plastic decorations. The dark, candied-fruit version that we're familiar with would NOT go over well here! We actually got some with our school lunch on Christmas Day, and all the students were super-excited. Even the sulky 3rd years who are heading off to highschool in a few months. It was pretty cute. Oh, and as I was walking home after our Christmas sushi dinner, I noticed that every single decoration had been taken down. Not a trace was left. Very efficient I suppose.

My little school lunch Christmas cake. It came in a cute box with directions on how to open it. It was pretty self-explanatory, but still, how thoughtful!

Canadian expats sitting down to dinner

And finally, on the 26th I went to my school's big, year-end staff party, called a "bon-enkai". It was held in a beautiful onsen-hotel in the town of Gero (famous for it's onsens and hotels), and during dinner all the men insisted on wearing their yukatta (light, traditional bath-robes). Fine, they were probably more comfortable than pants and a shirt, but loose cotton robes and free-flowing beer and sake don't mix well. Things become even more liberated when you throw karaoke into the mix. Oy. But hey, remember my sushi pillow? At the enkai the teachers did a small gift-exchange, and I am now the proud owner of a tofu pillow:

If you don't like cute, don't come to this country.

Ken-bu Performance

Back sometime in December - last year was such a blur - I had my first Kenbu performance at the Takayama cultural centre. I wasn't feeling the greatest that day, but we were all happy with the results. Just not our headbands.

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu...

... Meri Karisumasu etc.


first here are some more pictures of my apartment: