Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

A much-belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Man, I have some stories to tell y'all (don't laugh. Being here exaggerates any tinges of Southern-ness I may have acquired during my time in the 'Burg through contrast).

Aaron and I had a two-week break starting at Christmas, which just ended oh...last Thursday. So, this last week has been taken up with "gettin' back into the groove" at work, which has left me no time to bring everyone up to date on what that vacation period ACTUALLY CONTAINED. But I'm fixing that now :P

So, let's see. Christmas was fairly laid-back - we hosted the training group for dinner at our apartment, which consisted of a roast I made (in the toaster oven, no less!) with all the usual trimmings and a big ol' bucket of KFC. I realize that's odd for all of you who aren't familiar with the time-honored Christmas traditions of KFC in the States. Oh, you didn't know that we all ate KFC for Christmas? Well, look how ignorant you are of your own culture :P.

Actually, that was terribly tongue-in-cheek, wasn't it? Let's just say it's a common misconception among the Japanese I've discussed Christmas with that Americans buy buckets o' chicken to celebrate Baby Jeebus. If that were truly the case, I'd hope that Popeyes would be what we'd be getting at home, as it's infinitely superior to the Colonel's stuff.

Anyway! After stuffing ourselves in the traditional way, we all retired to our respective residences to chill out. A couple of days later, Aaron, Norm, Val, Erin and I visited Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium, which is in Osaka Bay on a small island. It was pretty cool, albeit in no way comparable to the Baltimore Aquarium's ginormous variety of exhibits. There were several neat things, of which I took many pictures: an almost full-grown king penguin chick, over-large stingrays, a WHALE shark, and several very frightening crabs, of which I have attached a picture. It's incredibly unnerving to see a tank of crabs the size of small children, all sitting very still, as though they were plotting to overthrow humanity from their secret aquarium base...really over-emphasizes the link between bugs (blech!) and crustaceans.

And I took some hella-sweet pictures of jellyfish, which will be in the photo gallery eventually if they aren't by the time you read this :P.

Christmas is very uneventful in Japan for obvious reasons (Shinto Jesus?), so the next few days were spent catching up on Christmas shopping and lazing about at home. And then there was NEW YEAR, which was one of the best experiences we've had here so far. It was absolutely insane and fantastic. Firstly, we trotted out to Umeda in the northern part of Osaka to have some dinner and visit the Umeda Sky Building. The Umeda Sky Building is very tall and architecturally odd-looking, as it consists of two high-rises, connected by a skywalk at the 22nd floor and a 360-degree viewing area at the 42nd floor. It was a cooooold, cold cold windy night on the observation deck, but for about $6 bucks, it was a fantastic view of Osaka-by-night (not an attractive place during the day). After being up there with the wind swirling my hair about, I was about ready to smack someone when I was informed Virginia's been running in the 60s.

Afterwards, Aaron, our buds here, and I took the subway back out to Sumiyoshi Taisha, an enormous temple very close to our apartment. It's one of the most famous temples in Japan, and extremely popular for New Year celebrations. I won't give you the tourist summary of the temple itself, as I'm sure you can google it if you really want to know, but it was pretty transfigured for New Year's celebrations. Unfortunately, we missed the midnight train and didn't catch the ringing of the 108 bells to "drive out the 108 evils which lead man into wrongdoing", but I guess I'll survive with my evils, like I've done for the 23 years so far :P.

I can't imagine a Catholic church ever looking the way this temple did for a celebration.

It took us 45 minutes to walk the three blocks from the station to the temple, and the streets were wall-to-wall people. It was the most organized chaos I've seen. Every five minutes, when the streetlights changed, perhaps 50 more people would move into the temple grounds, which was covered all around by street vendors, good luck games, food kiosks, lucky item sellers, fortune tellers, and so forth. When we finally managed to cross over the bridge, we decided we'd forego checking out all the vendors and things until after we'd done our duty by the "god of safe voyages and prosperity", and pressed forward into the temple proper. When we finally reached the front, we saw that all the temple-goers were throwing money into the shrine, clapping their hands three times, and bowing, so when in Rome...

After that, we ran out into the "carnival" area, and ate excellent food including a foot-long hotdog on a stick, candied fruit, lollipops, little pancake things with bean paste in the middle, milk tea, candy, and ummmm...I'm sure there was more. Mmm, gluttony.

We spent several hours there, and started heading home at around 3 a.m. Aaron and I felt pretty freakin' elated. For lack of better words, it felt so uniquely Japanese that I (sort of) forgave all the people who sneezed on me on the train on the way there. How's that for New Year spirit? :-D

Well, to flesh that out a little bit, it felt like we'd actually done something that we couldn't have done at home at all. Japan shares a lot with America regarding ordinary daily life, so I really really really enjoyed the temple experience.

Other than that, vacation was exactly as it should have been, considering how early in our trip it happened. I sort of regret that we weren't able to travel Asia (or go to Tokyo...) during it, but I'm seriously averse to the idea of taking the loans from my employers which might have financed those excursions, and willing to wait until we're more settled. So instead, we organized the house, bought things during the New Year sales, and attended to affairs, cleaning, etc. We did try and visit Kyoto, but the first time was a bit of a failed trip as we got very turned around.

I'm still not sure how I feel about my overall Japan experience. I wouldn't miss out on it for the world, but there are so many things that are fabulous and so many other things that are completely frustrating that my emotions regarding the country and culture as a whole are pretty complex, and surprisingly hard to elucidate in a coherent form. I can pull out all my rants at once, and all the things I love at once, but I can't seem to weigh the spiderweb of culture here as quickly and simply as I did in England. I'm sure it's because my points of reference here are a bit more different, but I do wish I had something more conclusive to say about it. It'll come in time - it just annoys the type A aspects of my personality.

And on a technical, kind-of-related-to-work note, it's very odd to me how most Japanese people I've met are very familiar with written English, but entirely confounded by hearing the same sentences spoken. From what I've heard, the school system is about to be overhauled tremendously, so it'll be interested to see how that changes. I've also been given a new schedule by ECC that's going to put me directly in junior high school/high school classes for most of the week, rather than in one of ECC's offices, so I'll update you all more on that as I get more exposure :P

Oof, that was a long one! I'll try and be more punctual about sending emails so that you don't get such an overload all at once :). Hope all is well at home and abroad (to those of you who are abroad). Thanks to everyone whose sent their regards our way - Aaron and I definitely appreciate it, and miss you all a great deal.