Special Xmas


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December 6th 2010
Published: December 7th 2010
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Christmas is here!

Last weekend I kicked off the season with a trip to a decked out Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, and I started the process of filling up on comfort foods to fight my holiday season homesick-ness.

At the USJ City Walk, at Bubba Gump Shrimp of all places, the other gai-jin and I stuffed ourselves to the point of immobility. I had my first veggie burger in months covered in fresh avocado and ranch dressing, and then we each ordered our own individual cookie sundaes - over ten dollars each, by the way. The next day brought more stuffing - no pun intended - with a JET Thanksgiving dinner.

I was especially thankful for this because of certain Japanese foods that have defeated me recently. I finally tried natto, a right of passage for foreigners in Japan. It's fermented bean paste, and it's disgusting. So is raw egg sushi, which I had the misfortune to try the very next day.

I've also been able to celebrate the holiday season at school, where I've started doing my Christmas lessons. My tech school students have a real passion for designing and creating, which came out when
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Ikuta Shrine in Kobe
we made Christmas cards.

I also witnessed these creative juices when I did a description activity with them a while back, in which I gave them instructions to draw famous characters without telling them who they were. Let's just say I am grateful the creators of Pokemon didn't give Pikachu long, floppy human ears.

It's fun to see how talented the kids are at things that I'm completely clueless about: at their culture festival a few weeks ago I got to see the walking, talking, bowing robot some students had built, and a first prize-winning electric race car and scooter.

This weekend, I continued in the Christmas spirit with a trip to Kobe City, where they host an annual lights festival. Tourists are funnelled through the city streets into a winter wonderland of intricate Christmas light displays the size of buildings (they aren't actually for Christmas but I enjoyed thinking of them that way).

The rest of the city was also done up in Christmas fashion, as is Tokushima with its banners that wish everyone a "special Xmas." Japanese people love to celebrate Christmas, but since they aren't Christian it's more like New Year's Eve in America. Friends and couples get together for parties and eat fried chicken and cake.

They also know Santa Claus, but they say he lives in Finnland. According to one of my genki-er classes, though, he either lives in Hokkaido (the northernmost island of Japan), Australia or - my favorite - Kenya.

It's been a strange and wonderful Christmas season so far, but my actual Christmas will be the most abnormal of all. I'll be spending it on a beach island in Thailand. New years will be in Phnom Penn, Cambodia, and the first few days of the new year will be spent in Laos. Warm weather and elephants, here I come!


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11th December 2010
Kobe Luminarie

Awesome!
What a light display - incredible!! (I have a feeling Shady Brook Farm is going to look pitiful in comparison next time you see it!)

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