Christmas tomfoolery Chez Morgan and Kernich

On Christmas Eve Eve, Thom and Sally had a small gathering of alcoholics at their house for the much vaunted Power Hour - i.e. a shot of beer every minute for an hour, beginning and ending with a shot tequila. Music maestro Kari Panaccione even created a special CD for this momentous event, with one minute slices of 60 karaoke classics to keep us going.

Actually, as it turned out, it was pretty easy as we only used 20ml shots. But still, it was pretty satisfying to have done it. Maybe it lulled us into a false sense of security about our alchohol consumption abilities though, because then we all proceeded to get completely wasted

My memory of the night is a little dim, but I remember having an awesome time playing on the Wii, Thom biting me and then passing out, and Anna being "poorly" in the bathroom for the last hour or so of the night. I also vaguely remember us doing a "speak nothing but Japanese for 3 minutes" challenge to help the native Japanese speakers who were there - this consisted of us awkwardly saying "um.....do you want to drink this? No, I don't want to drink that. I want to eat those" in broken Japanese until the timer finally went off.

Christmas decorations in Nagoya...

Some of the Christmas lights at the Takashimaya building

Masumi's leaving do..

My last day of work before the Christmas holidays was also the last day of work EVER for one of the staff at that school, Masumi who is in charge of all the kids stuff (and has been a massive help to me since I've been working there, as well as being very friendly and all that). So after work there was a little party to bid her farewell.

There is some serious efficiency when it comes to these parties - we all set off to the supermarket and everyone quickly dashed round getting all the ingredients we needed for food. And we're not talking party snacks here - we're talking proper dishes, mainly nabe which is like a casserole and some oden which is....also like casserole, but with some different stuff. As I couldn't read any of the packets or readily identify any of the food, I was in charge of looking after one of my students who came along with his Mum. He's only 2, so we had a great time wandering round the supermarket, occasionally stopping to poke stuff and stare at the delicious sweeties on theconfectionary aisle. Then whenever he sat down he would pat the seat next to him and say "Chris....sit" - very sweet. I watched him like a hawk the whole time , but unfortunately I let my guard down for one second when we were getting the groceries out of the car in the rain, and he fell into a gutter about 40cms deep and got soaked up to his waist. Whoops! He was fine though.

Merry Clistmas*

Christmas is fast approaching the land of the rising sun, and Nagoya is definitely entering into the spirit of it. Well kind of - because Japan isn't a Christian country, the religious aspect of Christmas is totally absent in from all the assembled regalia in shops and such. So all the pretty lights are stars and Santa Claus (never Father Christmas) is flippin' everywhere, but there's no angels, or any mention of mangers and whatnot. Now, I'm not a religious man, but it does feel a little sterile to not have just a little tiny baby Jesus somewhere in decorations - in fact, I walked past what I thought was a nativity scene the other day; as I got closer, it turned out to be Santa Claus dancing round a Christmas tree. But then that's all Christmas is in Japan so it's not a bad thing - even though it does partially represent the commercialised hinterland always alluded to by tabloid rags like the Daily Mail back in England. Everything's very pretty, and feeling very festive - come on some snow!

Along with the pretty decorations, Christmas also brings with it a more sinister component - Muzak. In England, virtually every shop - Clinton's Cards probably being the worst offender - has some whiny facsimile of a Christmas carol playing in the background over the festive season. By and large though, they're fairly inoffensive. Contrast that with Japan, where recently I have been subjected to some ear-bumming travesties or music. Today in the supermarket, there was some kind of dance remix of Jingle Bells which included several "orchestra HITS!" which you used to get on old Yamaha keyboards. After that, there was Oh Come All Yea Faithful, but as a full on rock guitar solo, at high speed. It seems that in most shops, if it's not rock guitar, it's a wrong guitar.

By far the strangest was in the library though - I ran in just before closing time and the "ending theme" was playing which is actually Auld Lang Syne. Most places in Japan play this to let people know they're closing, although usually they don't realise it's a new year's song in England. Anyway, either this was some alternative arrangement or someone had put the CD in a microwave, because it contained the strangest ululations I've ever heard - it was like the sound effects you might hear before you black out. If possible, I'm going to try and record it sometime, because something like that should really be shared with the world.

*Yes, yes, cheap I know.