I must say, it is good to be American.
I cannot wait to see if our new president can truly turn around our country and get the majority of Americans to stop being such ignorant, arrogant idiots.
I really hope my vote doesn't go to waste these next 4 years.


Also, I am excited that this blog has reached over 100 views, while probably 90% are either myself, the office or friends. I am amused that I have had one visitor from Tel Aviv, which is really neat.



Now back to the point of today's blog.
I'm taking a break from the lengthy, drawn-out, no-one-in-their-right-minds-would-want-to-read posts about boring work things to show you photos.
While there aren't many (mainly because I totally forgot to bring extra batteries for my camera), here are are a few photos from HSJ's company shinnenkai that I talked about a while ago.
I apologize for any fuzziness, pixelation, weird colorization or whatnot. I had to adjust these on a work computer which only has Photoshop 5.5. If any are completely terrible, I will change them when I get home.



This is the second year in a row where we held the party at a hotel buffet near Gifu Station.
Every table had teachers of our various languages from various countries, each who brought a dish from their home country. It's the one time of the year where we get close to all of our teachers in one room, so it can get very noisy. But, there's always a lot of great food!










One of the awesomest dishes there, homemade Green Curry with chicken rice. It was to die for!
Sadly, I didn't get many pictures of other dishes, but it was all so good. There were a lot of spicy dishes this year. A teacher from Sri Lanka made two types of curry, and one of the other Thai teachers made awesomely spicy Tom Yam soup.












This was my contribution to the festivities: my Grandmother's recipe for Church Windows, minus the usual walnuts and coconut. Wasn't sure if any of the families who were coming had children who had nut allergies, so I opted out of putting nuts in. I personally hate coconut so I didn't add any either. I made a full batch, and must have had 40 or more slices, and it was gone within the first half hour.
I also made Rum Balls, but while they were liked, they didn't go out nearly as quick.












We also had every single one of the Japanese teachers assigned to a group to do a "performance". The owner did a traditional comedy dance, one group did Pythagora Switch's "Algorithm Taiso" and "Algorithm March", one group dressed up as a cross-dressing disco comedy group that's popular right now.
Several teachers from other countries offered to share some of their traditional dance and music as well.





One of our teachers from China played us a very beautiful song on an Erhu and also a song on a Hulusi. They were just beautiful to listen to.




















A Korean teacher had herself and both of her children dressed up in traditional costume, and performed a dance with a drum for us. It was amazing to watch. I wish the lighting in the restaurant had been better so I could have taken better photos, but this was the best I could get.



















Now, this has nothing to do with the shinnenkai, but one of my coworkers just shoved this in my face. I thought it was a bottle of soy sauce or teriyaki sauce (which is nearly impossible to find in this country, ironically).


This is actually a bottle of orange drink. It's overly sweetened, like an orange popsicle, and isn't actually that good. It's weird to drink and looks just like a bottle of soy sauce, completely with the red cap that most bottles of soy sauce have in this country.

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.