On Christmas Eve, Chika an myself went out for a romantic dinner at a local Indonesian restaurant. And then headed to a darts bar where we were given "Christmas" Cheese cake and hot sake from the staff. Later we were given the more traditional strawberry and cream style "Christmas" cake from random customers drinking in the bar.
Christmas day was a Friday, and it just happened to be the last day of school before before winter holidays. And after a normal day at school, all the teachers had an end of year drinking party that night. The party started at 5:30 and we had a 4 hour all-you-can-drink and more food than we could possible eat!
I brought along a small Christmas cake that my mother sent me (thanks Mam!), and we gave it to the staff at the izakaya, where the party was, to cut up for us. This is how my tiny slice was beautifully presented to me; on a long plate with icing sugar sprinkled like snow, Santa sitting in some cream, with his footprints precisely marked into the "snow" and a random thing on top of the cake (I can't remember what that was...).
After our 4 hour drinking time expired, we headed off to our second party, where we all got boob shaped chocolate on our tables. It was a karaoke bar that had, for some reason unknown to me, garments and wigs that you could dress up in before you got on stage to sing! And as our group was pretty drunk at this stage two teachers were more than happy to dress up!
The previous week I had dressed up as Santa for a kids party and as a thank you from the organiser I got a smoked turkey leg. So on St. Stephen's Day I cooked myself up as best a Christmas dinner as I could! For some reason the turkey looked and tasted like ham, so it was kindof like having turkey and ham?!
On January 2nd Patrice, a girl I shared a house with in Limerick for a few years, came to visit on her way home from Australia. I always love when people from Ireland come to visit! It's nice to hear stories about home and be able to speak about stuff that only Irish people are familiar with; the latest Gift Grub etc.
We travelled around a bit while she was here. We visited the local sights Yurihonjo has to offer; the jizo's, the buddha. Chika joined us when we travelled to the neighbouring prefecture to visit the sand onsen and a cave onsen; anayukko (穴ゆっこ).
We went to Zao in Yamagata for 3 days. We went snowboarding in Zao Liza World and rode the Zao rope-way though the weather was very bad for both. We also visited one of the best nicest onsens I've ever been to; shinzaemon onsen (新左衛門の湯).
Two days after Patrice left I went to Tazawako Ski Jo for the weekend with two other guys from Akita. The weather was good though visibility of the lake was minimal.
Fun times!
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