Merry Christmas!!

Just in time for an American Christmas but a little late for a Japanese Christmas (by seven hours). The last week has been really busy, filled with finishing classes, bounenkais, band practice and a Christmas party I held yesterday. I feel like compared to last year, the end of the year really snuck up on me this time. I wanted to design some nengajo and send them out but didn't have any time at all! :P Oh well. Next year is my year, year of the dragon, so maybe being in my element will bring me some extra luck.

On Thursday I got to spend a wonderful evening with all my junior high school teachers at their bounenkai. I love that school best of all, and the teaches all treat me so nicely and are so friendly and chatty. We played a really fun team game and all got to receive presents that varied in usefulness. I chose the gift wrapped in the Kaldi bag. You can never go wrong with food, in my opinion. Saturday was the bounenkai for my Japanese class. It was hilarious seeing our 60 year old teacher drunk, sassy, and speaking English. She is probably my favorite person in this country and I'm so happy I started going to that class last February. We all hung out in Hirome Ichiba for the evening and did a gift exchange.

Friday, me and Matto went to band practice in Tokushima. Because our drummer had to work (on the emperor's birthday too! Damn you Sunny Clean!!) we went early to eat dinner with kabuki face and his girlfriend, then went to practice from 9-11. Arase had just gotten this really amazing recording device as a gift so we got to test it out. The quality and balance of just our practice tracks is impressive, to say the least. Can't wait to start recording for real!!

Yesterday, I held a small party at my house with some close friends and my young JTEs. I made a vegan caramel apple pie that came out soooo wonderfully and Matto made his vegan pasta bake, which tasted better than usual. We also played a game that my family always plays for Christmas where everyone brings five presents and adds them to a massive pile in the center of the room. The contents of the presents vary greatly in quality, which is the funnest part of the game. Everyone receives three playing cards and when your card is called, you get to take a gift from the center. Once all the gifts are gone, you can steal from other people. It gets really fun when people get possessive of a gift they don't even know the contents of. Me and Tomokazu kept stealing a present back and forth that ended up being an incense tray or something silly like that. We also watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I haven't seen in ages. One of my favorite movies, no doubt.

Hope everyone has/had a lovely Christmas as well! Whether you're with your family at home, or far from home with your friends, spending christmas with loved ones and people you like is the most important thing to me. :) Now, I'm off to Korea for a four day vacation and then will be in Mie Ken for the new year. This is the first time I'll be spending new years in Japan. I'm pretty excited to go to the famous Ise shrine and pray for a good new year. I have a feeling 2012 will be a good one. ;)

Seisui Enkai

so much love

APPLE PIE

People love showing me the bird in love <3 Christmas party!

Just felt like I needed to share...

Just how amazing this day was. I woke up to a text from Atsushi, telling me we were invited by a band named "The Mad Wife" to play a show in Tokushima in January. I've seen them play before, and the one female guitar/vocalist is really bamf so it was super exciting to get invited by them to play a show!! We get to perform along with a band from Tokyo called "Elmoc," which is an all-female melodic punk band, "Four Tomorrow" who are from Tokyo, and "WHAT-A-NIGHT's" one of my favorite bands at the moment from Tokushima.

Then, once I got to work today, I found out that the photo I had submitted into the Aki City art contest on Sunday won a prize! And not just any prize (I won two last year that were really just recognitions), I won the prize where you get 1万 along with it!! Can't wait to go see the exhibit. There are always so many interesting pieces of art submitted.

Starts off as a huge pile and cooks down. Those lame-os were hiding behind the pile of cabbage.

Once it had been stewing for about 20 minutes.

And in addition to all that good news, Yukiko, Nat-chan, Ryoku-chan and I got to drive into the city and have some Motsu Nabe (which honestly should be added to the food post below). Mostu is intestines, and although I knew this, like I mentioned before I will give most anything a try if I hear it is made well. This was fantastic. I'm kind of in awe at how delicious intestines stewed in a pot with cabbage, tofu, dumplings, and green onion was. Not to mention how amazing the zousui was after (when you put rice and egg into the nabe and let it all cook and soak up the left-over flavors). We also went to AEON to get a birthday present for Nat-chan's older sister, and I was able to prep some gifts for De-'s birthday next week, and gather some ideas for Christmas gifts~ Gotta get onto making a design for my new years cards this year!

Although it's only early November and there are already Christmas trees and illuminations going up everywhere, I actually really love the early Christmas feeling and could care less that Thanksgiving hasn't come and gone yet. Who wants decorations of leaves and turkeys when you can have sparkly trees and lights?!