a slightly boring January

During the coldest January in 25 years in Nagoya (though this is only at about 0 degrees on average), I count down my days teaching – about 10 or so left to go!

January has been a pretty tame month; nothing particularly noteworthy has happened (is it bad that this bores me?), spending my weekends either going out for karaoke (yes it is actually really fun!) or going to see the Nagoya philharmonic orchestra, and sitting around having a lot of coffee! However, next week I’m off to see the snow festival in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Apparently they have giant ice statues, on top of which the winter illuminations should still be up. Chilly on the outside, but oh so warm on the inside (what a cliché!). A bonus of course is that I immediately associate Hokkaido with good food – at a food festival I went to once most of the stalls displayed food from Hokkaido. This means fresh crab, lamb, ramen, and CHEESECAKE! Tanoshimi ni!! (I’m looking forward to it, in Japanese). Expect tonnes of photos.



Futhermore, by the end of this week I am aiming to get some flights booked for my upcoming adventures, though the timing of my visit to the Middle East isn’t exactly perfect. Is it ever?
The way I see it is that most of the anger is directed towards the government, and the latter will be doing everything possible to protect the tourism industry! And who knows, maybe an exciting story will come out of it? Anyone with suggestions on things off the beaten track to see/do in Jordan, Syria or Lebanon please give me a shout!

Happy New Year!

Despite begin stuck in Japan, 2010 ended pretty well and started quite peacefully!

After a crazy few days in the run-up to Christmas, I managed to settle down a little and spent Christmas Eve with a friend of mine and her family. This friend did a homestay in the States when she was in high school, so her host family from back then always sends her kids a lot of presents, and she celebrates Christmas the right way! We watched love actually once her kids went to bed, then we put all the Christmas presents under the tree; the next morning I was subsequently woken up by her kids (boy called Haru, 6, and a girl called Mika, 4) who shouted – Santa ga kita! (Santa came!). After opening the presents we had some gingerbread for breakfast – a pretty normal Christmas actually!

Then I went to meet 2 other friends and we went to the Marriot for a buffet lunch (I never ate so much in my life!!) and then we went back to their place to have some mulled wine and delicious Wittamer Christmas cake. Nice! Had more mulled wine on Boxing day with some other friends – all together a pretty cool Christmas.
For New Years I hung out with the same friends as at Christmas – we decided to keep it low-key so we bought a monopoly board and played that into the New Year. I won, so I got to keep it ☺

On New Year’s day I went to the biggest shrine in Nagoya – Atsuta Shrine – and followed a Japanese New Year’s ritual. It was really busy so I had to wait and waddle towards the shrine like a penguin, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I threw in my money, clapped my hands, prayed for good luck and did the bow.

Then I went and bought an omikuji (or fortune) which I’ve not yet deciphered, and hung it up. It was interesting to see what Japanese people do! I didn’t eat osechi (New Year’s food, which they make in advance as they’re not allowed to cook for the 1st 2 days of the New Year, and to preserve it it’s loaded with sugar) even though you can buy it at the supermarkets nowadays, because it all looks very jelly-like and fishy.

I also went to the shops to have a look for “fukubukuro” – or lucky bags. This is the Japanese version of super sales. They put all their clothes from last year in bags (size-divided of course) and you buy one of these bags. The trick is that you can’t look inside them, so you don’t know what exactly you’re buying (which is why they’re not my cup of tea). However, you can buy a bag for, say, 10,000 yen (about 80 euros) but the content is actually worth 3 or 4 times as much. Apparently people go crazy over them.

I think most shops start their sales of them today (02 january) as all shops were closed yesterday except for Gap and Zara. Funny, only the western shops didn’t take a break…