(no longer) LOST IN JAPAN

Cheers! To enkais, my new "LIFE", mochi and early Christmasses...

Well it was a busy weekend here again. Friday night was my bonnenkai (忘年会) at school. The kanji means respectively "forget", "year" and "meeting"... which is fitting. The bonnenkai is a gathering to help you forget the year that has just finished. And trust me... some of the teachers drink so much that they could probably forget the year that hasn't even started yet.
It wasn't as fun as the last couple of enkais that I've been to... possibly because I only had a few drinks... but also because I was sitting at a table with all the third year teachers. I don't know any of the third year teachers very well so it was a little bit awkward at first. However, after the kanpai and once they had a few drinks in them, it was a little bit better. Katy's ex-homeroom teacher had asked me earlier that week if I would help the third year teachers with their performance, and I agreed. Basically, all I had to do was put on a kimono and speak French while Yamaoka-sensei, the large gym teacher, dressed as Hard Gay and danced around me with HG's patented pelvic thrust saying "Hoo! Hoo!". For those of you who don't know, HG is a very very popular comedian in Japan. See profile here (yes, I know it's Wikipedia but for our purposes, it's good enough...) So imagine a very large, 50-year-old Japanese man dressed like HG, dancing around on stage.
That was quite amusing...
I also won an electronic dart board in Bingo. Well I didn't exactly win it. Yamaoka-sensei won it and then gave it to me saying: "Here, this is for international relations". In exchange, I gave him the lottery ticket that I'd received as a consolation prize (though if the ticket wins it's worth 1 billion yen). So now I have an awesome dart board and nowhere to put it...

Saturday, I had my French lessons in the morning and then braved the cold to check out the Daiei replacement... If you remember my dismay back in October when I discovered that it had gone bankrupt... Well it's back. Not the Daiei... They've replaced the Daiei with "LIFE". It's not as practical as the Daiei (there's no more home centre) and the Daiso (100 yen store) doesn't re-open until tomorrow but they have a HUGE bookstore now and the fashion inside is a lot less "old lady-ish". AND AND AND... their jeans shop hems pants for free... in less than 30 minutes!!! I spent a lot more money than expected but it was soooooooo worth it. Besides... it's not like I bought stuff I didn't need.

Saturday night was Zack & Helen's annual Christmas party. It's kind of hard to describe without pictures... once again, I forgot my camera, even after I put in on the table so that I wouldn't forget it... so I'll just say that it was tons of fun. Lots of people, lots of food, lots of mulled (sp?) wine... The best gifts from the gift exchange included Hello Kitty Christmas decorations, a laughing alligator, a cowboy hat, a wrestler's mask and a giant hamster costume. I walked away with a cool alarm clock that not only tells the time but the ambient temperature and humidity as well. The instructions are in Japanese though so I might have it figured out this time next year.

I slipped away early the next morning, to the sounds of snoring, to go make mochi with some students from Oji Tech. Mochi is sticky rice, pounded to death in a giant stone bowl with a giant wooden hammer. Afterwards, you divide it into smaller pieces about 4cm in diametre. Making mochi (mochitsuki) is a traditional thing to do around this time of year. You make the mochi a few days before Jan. 1st (Oshougatsu) and then you eat them on New Year's Day. The little mochi cakes are really very versatile. Alone they are a little bit bland (it is only pounded rice after all) but they can be boiled in soup, stuffed with cheese (my favorite thing at izakayas), even grilled with a little bit of soy sauce and grated daikon on the side. You can even have them for dessert... filled with azuki (sweet red bean paste) or covered with kinako powder (sweet toasted soybean powder). Although I had to wake up early, it was a nice and informative way to spend the late morning.

And finally... the moment you've all been waiting for... I received a package from my family on Friday. It contained my Christmas gift from home. I promised that I would wait until Sunday night to open it so I put it in a very unobtrusive place under my table so that I wouldn't be tempted. Sunday night, I opened it and guess what... iPod! iPod!! iPod!!! IPOD!!!! Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah!!!! ^^ I have joined the masses. But who cares?! The thing is AWESOME!!! And way more practical than lugging around my 70-odd CDs... It's thin and pretty and black... with 30GB of space and a colour screen. I even uploaded some photos into it just to test it out. It's so cool!!! Thank you Mom and Dad!!! You just made me a very happy camper and now, train rides will seem much shorter with music keeping me company. I have to go shopping for accessories now. In addition to my new gadget, I also got the complete full season of Lost from my brother and sister... Finally I can find out what all the buzz is about. I've heard good things about this TV show... and as a bonus... ENGLISH TV!!!! And from my favorite Godmother and her family, I got my 2006 Dilbert calender. Now they'll be in my thoughts every day of the year. d(^o^)b THANK YOU EVERYBODY!!!

Sorry... that was a really long post. But I'm by myself in the teacher's room because the other teachers have a meeting. So I'm just killing time now... The mail just came. My tickets for Okinawa are sitting beside me now. HOORAY!

posted by Samantha @ 7:44 PM