. . . everybody's having fun

Merry Christmas!

I'm at work today, because Christmas is not a public holiday in Japan. It just doesn't feel like Christmas, not at all. Not that I am not having any fun: I got to play hangman and fruits basket today with the first graders, who are just young enough to enjoy playing games (the second graders are too 'cool' for them).

I was looking forward to a white Christmas, but the weather has been doing some very strange things recently. The bitterly cold weather of the middle of the month has ended, the snow has turned back into rain and the sun has come out. It looks like spring is on it's way already, which is ridiculous. The grass even looks greener than it did the other week. Yesterday the ticket booth lady at the train station told me it is the first non-white Christmas she can remember seeing in Konoura, ever. She placed the blame on the shoulders of Global Warming, ignoring the fact that last year's winter was the snowiest in 86 years, with blizzards for the two weeks leading up to Christmas.

Kamagadai however is an utterly different story. 20-30 minute drive away (depending on the driver) though it may be, it has been covered in a constant blanket of snow for three weeks now. I won't be going back to Kamagadai until the start of term three in mid January. By the time I return there, the snow will probably be several metres deep.

On Friday I went to an end of year work party. We all stayed at a onsen/hotel in Yamagata Prefecture all of 30 mintes drive away. We had a dinner and played a lot of silly games, like charades. We also played Secret Santa Bingo. I won a string of Christmas lights, the type designed to be put in ones garden or on ones Christmas tree. As my Chritsmas tree is 10cm tall and I don't have a garden, I have put the lights up on my wall. They look a bit funny because the cables are dark green and my wall is white, but that's okay.

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep that night because four male teachers in the room next door were playing Mah Jongg until three in the morning, and having a fine time of it if the noise level was any indication.

Yesterday I took the train into Nikaho to pick up my tickets to Seoul. There is a two and a half hour wait between when one train arrives in Nikaho and when the next train back to Konoura leaves. It took me less than 15 minutes to pick up the tickets. What to do with the rest of the time? Go shopping of course. I went to Daiso and surprisingly did not buy much. What I did buy was mostly practical stuff like new kitchen cloths which are cheaper there than at the supermarket, a new paring knife etc. Then I went to the drug store and bought such interesting things as soap, air freshener, pain killers and obscenely cheap sanitary pads. (New Zealand should be ashamed of itself, charging women so much for their necessities. Here in Japan a woman can get a double pack of Whisper pads, 44 in all, for the equivalent of about NZ $3.50 so long as she goes to the drug store and not the supermarket. You can't even get 20 pads for that much in NZ unless you buy No Frills brand, which can't absorb a sparrow's piddle. The downside is that all tampons here are applicator.) Then I went to Max Valu and bought things that aren't available at Konoura Max Valu such as cheese that doesn't taste like soap, croissants that were baked on premesis and not in a factory on the other side of the country somewhere, and a turkey leg. Then I caught the train home again. I am turning into such an adult.

I ordered a Christmas present for myself over the internet, although it probably won't arrive for another couple of weeks. I didn't think of doing so until last week. I ordered three items through Amazon.co.jp's marketplace, from an England-based discount book and CD distributor. What I ordered was two CDs by a group called Mediaeval Baebes: Mirabilis and The Rose. They are not my usual fare, but what is? The Mediaeval Baebes sing songs that for the most part borrow lyrics from mediaeval poetry, to music that they compose that is inspired by real mediaeval music and played on mediaeval instruments such as citerns and recorders. They sing in all sorts of languages: Old English, Latin, 11th century Irish, 15th century Spanish, French, Russian . . . Good stuff. It's not all flowery high-brow stuff either. One of my favourite songs of theirs tells part of Chaucer's 'Milleres Tale' or possibly another fabliaux of very similar theme. Another song on the same album is a 15th century Welsh poem that was outlawed because it was in praise of female genitalia. It's such a pretty sounding song too; what a laugh! Not all of their songs are crude; they have also done renditions of Scarborough Fair and the story of Tam Lin.

The third thing I ordered for myself is the new book by Bryan Sykes, Blood of the Isles. I already own 'The Seven Daughters of Eve' and 'Adam's Curse'. I can't wait to get my hands on Blood of the Isles. I guess that not everyone is as interested as me in books on human genetics, but if you are, you really ought to read Bryan Sykes' books.

Anyway, everyone reading this either: I hope you have a merry Christmas or; I hope you had a merry Christmas.

And let's all have a Happy New Year.