Chirstmas and New Year's

Ok, so the last two weeks have been pretty busy. I've tried to sum them up with pictures.

2 weeks ago, I received a bike for Christmas from the Yoshidas. It has been a huge help. I can bring home more groceries faster now. Plus, cycling is my favorite exercise, so this was a truly welcomed present.

On the 23rd was church's Christmas party. The Japanese celebrate Christmas a little differently here. One major difference is what they eat for their Christmas dinner. They always have chicken and Christmas cake (usually of the shortcake kind). Below is my team making our Christmas cake.

You've got to have an edible Santa!

And there is chicken!

What's Christmas without the three wise men?

Ok, the next two pictures are dedicated to why I love Japanese bakeries. The top is a melon bread turtle (adorable and delicious) and the Christmas tree is a cream horn. I bought these when I went out shopping on Christmas Eve before I went to the Takahashi's for a Christmas dinner, where they had lots of food including chicken and Christmas cake.

It was good.

This was better!

So, on Christmas day I went to my church's Bishop's (the Onos' [think Oh No!]) house for Christmas dinner. We had chicken wings, roast beef, mashed potatoes, salad, and Christmas cake (there was other food, but let's just tell you what I ate). When I arrived the Bishop's wife asked me what she needed to do with her mashed potatoes. She had not added milk or butter yet, so we added that to taste. The Bishop then wanted to know how to make gravy, so I told him the ingredients and that I was not sure of the proportion. He tried it out and was successful =D

Then on the 26th, I was asked to introduce American Christmas (in English) to some elementary school students. I introduced it to two classes. One in the morning and then one in the afternoon. Below is the afternoon class (and some of the moms). We played games for points. Each point was 5 en (yen) that went to UNICEF. They got points for speaking English. They had to answer questions (1 pt), ask questions (2 pt), and win games (5 pt each win). The teacher had them doing spelling bees, racing to find the English word, among other games. There were plenty of opportunities to gain points.

Team Stephanie!

After teaching, I went to a winter party. It was so much fun. My stomach hurt from the hours of laughing. Good food and good people. You cannot ask for more.

And then there was New Year's Day. First, I woke up with a sore throat on New Year's Eve so I opted to just stay home and watch Kouhaku (which the red team so should have won! btw!!) . I ate mochi at midnight with some sparkling grape juice (yes I mixed cultures). I also made sure to eat various strawberry flavored items too (No one told me to eat strawberries, but so many strawberry flavored things came out, I figured it was a New Year's food). The only New Year's food I did not eat was Shrimp Tempura. Anyway, I headed to the closest large shrine to experience Japanese New Year.

This is the entrance to the main road to Takahatafudo's shrine from the station.

I had to stop and wait to enter it was so crowded.

Along the road there were various shops to buy food. This stand is selling chestnuts.

Here's another one as I was waiting to get into the shrine's grounds. This one had candied fruits and warm sake.

I got stopped right before!

Once in, every inch, nay centimeter, was covered with shops and people. I did not wait to enter the shrine to pray. I figured God could hear me just fine from the souvenir stand. I also did not buy an Omikuji (a fortune) my last one was 大吉 (excellent luck), so I didn't want to ruin it (ie the line was horrendous)

Cell phone strap, anyone?

Fish on a stick?

Various shiny objects of the Japanese kind. Daruma, Manekineko, tigers (it is the year of the tiger after all =D), among other things

Soy sauced grilled corn. It is good.

I opted to buy some yaki soba. Soba, after all, is a New Year's food. Plus, they put mayo on all the okonomiyaki. I can't eat that. I wasn't in the mood for yakitori or ramen, either.

So many people.

As I was looking for a higher spot to get a picture of all the people, I came across a cemetery. On New Year's many families clean their family's tomb. Above is the water buckets you bring to the tomb. Below are some pictures of Japanese headstones.

The whole cemetery

So as I was climbing up the hill by the shrine I came across these statues. There are 88 total, and since I wanted to go hiking anyway, I went looking for them all.

This one got mochi and a mikan! Lucky!!

Anyway, as I was looking for them all, I started seeing signs to Tama Zoo, which is right by Chuo University. So naturally I followed them.

I ended up in a neighborhood, but it still had signs, so on I went.

I came across this shrine as I was climbing up and down hills.

Here's what it's like. Japan is a very populated area, so every one is kind of cramped together. But that's ok cause they still have nature areas. They aren't sacrificing nature to give themselves more space.

Ok, above is Mt Fuji that I can see from my apartment (it is a 15 second walk to the river where you can take that picture). The bottom one is what I saw while I was hiking. It looked bigger to me on that day, and I just stopped and looked at it for awhile.

More hiking

Fire warning! The mountain will catch on fire.

I came across a bamboo grove right before I got to the road that lead to Chuo. I love bamboo groves.

This is one of my favorite things about Japan. They don't have much land, but what they do have they use for things like gardens! These are cabbages. Wow! Who is that good looking shadow?!

Before I went home, I made sure to visit the shrine to Disney's Stitch. The small blue thing in the middle is Stitch. I don't know why someone abandoned their stuffed animal there, but I like it!

So on the 2nd, the Yoshidas' invited YanYan, the elders and me over for dinner. YanYan and I went over early to help make gyoza. The gyoza I made looked extremely ugly next to YanYan's, but they tasted the same...

After a dinner of nabe (a pot with pretty much anything you want to put in it), we played this game that the Yoshidas play on new year's. It is a stack of cards with Japanese historic figures but there are different types. There were ministers, monks, samurai, princesses, emperors, and empresses. If you drew a minister you kept it. If you drew a princess you kept her and drew again. If you drew a monk, you had to discard all your cards into a discard pile. If you drew and emperor or empress, you got all the cards from the discard pile. But if you got the empress, she worked as a princess as well, and you drew again. If you drew a samurai, you had to hurry. It meant anyone could grab for cards, so if you had a lot you had to be fast to protect your pile.

I need to mention something here...Japanese people love punishment games. They feel it makes games more fun if the loser has to pay. I agree that it does! So the punishment game for losing that night was the 1st and 2nd place got to draw on the loser's face. Yes, that's right.

Anyway, Elder Lofthouse (from Idaho) and I won the first two games (I got first, he got 2nd), so we got to draw on YanYan's and Elder Ochiai's faces.

However, the third game I had a ton of cards. And then there were only 3 cards left and it was my turn. I drew 2 princesses and a monk!! I lost all my cards right at the end. But apparently, my face was priceless enough to have the whole room laughing for a whole 3 minutes. But I really could not believe it! I was all ready to turn Toshi into Harry Potter when I got to draw on his face!

The third game actually ended with 3 people not having any cards, so the three winners took turns drawing on the losers' faces. This is the result:

Needless to say, any guilty feelings I had about drawing snot coming out of YanYan's noes immediately left when I saw the hearts drawn on my cheeks. The two of us walked home together with our crazy faces. It was a lot of fun.

明けましておめでとう！Happy New Year!