Mei- ri Kurisamasu

 

Good morning from northern, snowy Japan! Season's greetings to all!

 

But.....my Christmas morning? Have to be quick here because I have an ordinary Tuesday of classes today. Bah! Humbug! Baaad.

Love my students a lot. But I'd rather stay here in my pajamas and eat my way through my Christmas presents from friends, watch TV, go skiing in the sunshine...and cook some kind of family dinner tonight.

Instead I am prepping for work. And trying to reassure Okaasan that today's hula dance will be FUN! Fun! FUN!

She isn't convinced. I printed out a sign for her table in Japanese : Hula Dance Bus is coming at 10.30am.

She's repeatedly asking me me/telling me that the class was bad, the teacher bad, don't want to go. I am constantly telling her: DIFFERENT class, place, teacher, students! DIFFERENT!

 

aghh......so this is Christmas.

But I've just given myself a quiet 30 mins over a bowl of cerial and a cup of tea and opened presents. Every year it is embarrassing a little, because there are many presents for me and hardly any for Yujiro. So it's kind of better to open them on my own and save a few for when he is home later.

Solitary splendor of present opening with BBC news on cable TV.

 

Last night? Christmas Eve? I lunched with Okaasan and then left her curry dinner on flasks on the kitchen table... escaped it all and went to:

A SMAP Concert! The oldest boy band in Japan. Has been popular for years, the members are superstars of TV, film, CMs and cooking shows.

An old student got tickets thru the fan club and we went :-)

Great concert. FOUR hours of it all...

 

 

Great concert. Very good value for money. Shit - these guys work hard.

 

I got home around 10 pm exhausted from it all.

 

Walked into the kitchen, Okaasan looked round  from her TV watching:

"It didn't come! Dinner didn't come! Nothing came!"

"Your dinner? No - Okaasan you ate it! Look! Here at the dirty dishes, you ate curry and rice about 3 hours ago. I had to go out! We had lunch together, and you ate dinner here - look here are the dishes!"

 

Happy Christmas everyone!