Where Oh Where to Begin

Sorry for the long hiatus, folks. I've got a new camera now, so this is gonna be a picture-heavy post, which is far more interesting than my blabbing anyways.

So Christmas here in Japan was a little weird for me. Decorations and carols can be seen and heard everywhere here during the season, but it just didn't feel like Christmas at all. I think this is mainly due to the fact that for the first time ever, I wasn't home for Christmas. Instead, I was at work. Yes, work. Not to mention, Japanese Christmas involves eating "Christmas cake" and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yes, you read that right -- people line up at KFC to eat a bucket of the Colonel's greasy goods. wtf?

Anywho, in an attempt to get the Christmas season off to a good start, I decked out the English bulletin board at one of my schools with American Christmas info. More importantly, though, I painstakingly made the most kickass Christmas tree and Snowboard Santa ever. See evidence of awesomeness below.


I think Santa deserves a closeup.


It says "Kanno Chuugakkou" (Kanno JHS) on his snowboard.

I also had the opportunity to spread some Christmas cheer to my Sentaku English class (elective English class) and Hirabayashi JHS. This class is absolutely my favorite, so I spent an ungodly amount of time making gingerbread cookies for our Christmas party and assembling gingerbread houses for them to decorate during the class -- and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was also fun to introduce everyone to gingerbread, something which very few people here have even heard of (interesting and surprising for a place that likes ginger so much). Anywho, here's the results:


I made a billion little gingerbread men and women, and a few bigger ones, which I decorated for each of my kids and the teacher (7 in all). Those are their English names if you're wondering.


I built two houses to decorate, so I figured it would be fun to divide the students, and have the boys decorate one and the girls decorate another. Here are the boys whilst decorating...


And the girls (I helped since there are only two of them).


The boys hilariously hideous finished product. It doesn't look so bad here, but you should have seen it in person.


And my ladies' "cho kawaii" (super cute) house. Girls win, as usual.


And a final close-up of the finished products.

So next on the list of things I must cover here is snowboarding, which I have done a lot of lately (I'm going again tomorrow, yay!!) Conditions over here are amazing, and I'm getting better every time I go, which rocks. Here are a few pics of the fun I've been having:


Kazuya rocks dayglo like no one I have ever known.


Look at all that snow, ya'll.


And look at all those cool people in front of those mountains... (I'm in burgundy)


Now look at this picture and tell me Masa is not absolutely adorable.

So in Japan, there are monkeys that live in the mountains. Every single time I ride in the mountains, I'm constantly staring out the windows hoping to catch a glimpse of the critters. Well last time I went boarding, it was my lucky day. Literally about 1 minute before spotting this giant monkey family I said something to the effect of "where are the freakin' monkeys?"



And my favorite:


They were so freaking adorable. There were a couple of babies as well.

So I just got back from Tokyo where I spent 4 days around new years. I have quite a few pics from that, though, so I'll devote a different blog post (soon, I promise) to that. Check back soon!