December in Japan is in modern Japanese called "the 12th month," however in classical Japanese it has a different name: shiwasu.

The kanji for shiwasu, 師走, means "teachers running" or "teachers run around" and gives the image of how in olden days even teachers (usually Buddhist monks) ran around like a chicken with their head cut off near the end of the year.


Modern Japan is no exception. While Christmas is not celebrated for it's "true" meaning, the introduction of Christmas to Japan was a retailer's dream come true.
EVERYONE has a Christmas sale.
Companies, businesses and schools have Christmas parties.
Couples exchange gifts, and middle school and high school crushes are bashfully admitted.
Children wait for Santa to bring that one gift he'll leave on their pillow, and dream of the Christmas cake and all of its strawberries (which there are special greenhouses especially for all over the country).
And on top of it all, exactly a week later there's oshogatsu.

Oshogatsu is the Japanese for New Years and is the real reason behind everyone in the country running around with their heads cut off.
Instead of Christmas cards, New Years postcards need to be printed and dropped off at the post office by the 25th in order to be delivered on New Years' morning.
Everything in the house and office needs to be uprooted and scrubbed to a sparkle.
Got a tatami room with paper doors? Yeah, you need to strip those and glue new sheets of rice paper to them.
Then there's the food. And the temple and shrine visits. And the family visits.
So much to prepare for.

The last two weeks of the year in Japan are a whirlwind and are chock full of car accidents as a result.
I was caught up in one on Monday.
Coming home from the local import store with bunches of supplies to make rum balls, my husband and I decided it would be best to make them with real rum instead of the artifical rum flavoring we had just bought, and luckily there was a Liquor Mountain liquor store coming right up!
Pulled up to a light to turn right, but there was too much traffic so I had to wait until it turned red.

Woo red light!
Oh wait, there's still a car coming. I'll let him run the red light and then I'll go.
*starts to turn*
JESUS ALLAH BUDDHA! THAT OTHER VAN ISN'T STOPPING!
*brake* *bam* *screech* *BAM*

A white mini van decided that it could make it through the light, didn't even see me, clipped my right-side headlamp with it's wheel well, thus ripping off the front-right side of my car, and then ran into a traffic signal pole. While my husband and I were okay (though I have a sore back that will be looked at tomorrow), the driver of the white van, a lady nearing late 40s or early 50s, hit her knee pretty hard when her dashboard collapsed on her upon impact with the pole.


The process that comes with having a traffic accident in Japan is a bit different than that of America, at least in my experience. My only experience prior to this has been when someone rear-ended me on the highway my junior year of college, causing me to go smack into the barrier on I-480 in Cleveland. That was a much worse accident, and the shmuck who rammed into me ran off.

Over the next few weeks, as things go, I'll probably talk more about what happened once the police arrived, and the process of what happens afterwards.
For now, I think this is long enough.