Another Christmas Past

It has taken me four whole days to get around to writing this blog. It's hard to write about Christmas when it feels like it was a few months ago instead of just a few days ago. Actually, Christmas this year was quite anticlimatical; on the Japanese calender it's just another work day, another school day, that you might get a present or two and eat Christmas cake - as soon as it's over, it's over. There's no Christmas leftovers like Christmas lights hanging on the houses until February, no growing piles of Christmas trees in mall parking lots, no family get-togethers and no Christmas sales. You just blink and it's gone. I actually got a late Christmas card in the mail yesterday and I felt really weird opening it, like it was completely the wrong season.
But none-the-less I thought I would share some Christmas memories with all of you that I did not get to share in the yultide with in Canada this year.
-Of course there were all my little Japanese-Israelite children speaking poorly accented English. We did the Christmas story play in two towns, so we had performances on back to back days, which was quite hectic.
-I unexpectedly got a gingerbread house kit from home; it was amazing. I would open the box and the scent of gingerbread and cinnamon came wafting out. What a good Christmas smell. I built it with my one high school girl during class. She had never made one, and most people who saw it after had never really seen anything like it in real life and were all fascinated by it. I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but that candy was sooo sweet!! I could hardly eat it. I was saddened by how much my mouth's capacity for sugar has changed and I wonder if it'll ever work back up the tolerance I had to sugar that I had before. Then we all ate it on Christmas Day after Christmas dinner.
-Bonita and I made the traditional Christmas dinner for the people in our church (which is not huge). We made turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, a baked squash dish, buns, broccolli salad, a danish kringle, and my grandma's kringle. None of the 9 Japanese people that were there had ever had anything like it in all their lives, and it was really funny watching them eat and comment on things; it's interesting how different cultures just take different things for granted, like how I took all those Western Christmas traditions for granted. Bonita kept saying how everything was in America, and how it was a traditional American meal (while I shouted in my head "Canada!"...I'm patriotic that way) and how it felt just like home. I couldn't help but disagree with her. There was nothing about it that felt like home; everybody was talking Japanese. (Actually, I'm not gonna lie, it felt like Christmas all day until the Japanese people showed up.) So for Christmas Day there was Christmas decorations and Christmas food, but the atmosphere was nothing like Christmas at all.
-During a Christmas party in my Friday morning ladies' class we sang a couple of carols. When we were singing Joy to the World in Japanese one of the ladies started making a ruckus. We all stopped singing and asked her what the heck was going on. Through her laughter she told us that she had confused the meaning of the chorus. In Japanese it's "shuwa kimaseri", which means "the Lord has come". It's pretty straightforward, but she had always thought it was written in one alphabet instead of another, which completely changes the meaning. So instead of it being the Lord coming, written in old honorific Japanese it turned into someone coming yelling a Japanese comic hero fighting noise. Think ninja noise and picture fighting hands and then say this word: 'shuu-WA!'. And that's how Jesus came. I laughed everytime I sang that song for the next two days. I hope I remember it next for year.
AND...OH WOW. I'M ON A JAPANESE FRIEND'S COMPUTER AND I JUST ACCIDENTLY HIT SOME SORT OF CAPS LOCK BUTTON BUT I CANNOT FIND FOR THE LIFE OF ME HOW TO TURN IT OFF. BEATS ME.
BUT, AS I WAS SAYING....
AND THOSE ARE SOME OF MY CHRISTMAS MEMORIES OF THIS YEAR. AFTER SPENDING TWO DAYS IN AKITA CITY WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE, THEN SPENDING TWO DAYS ALL BY MYSELF AT HOME IT'S TIME TO GEAR UP FOR NEW YEARS. I'M LEAVING TOMORROW MORNING FOR TOKYO FOR FIVE DAYS. THAT'LL BE A CHALLENGE IN ITSELF, THE LONGEST STRAIGHT PERIOD OF TIME I'VE EVER SPENT IN JAPANESE. I THINK I'LL EITHER COME BACK FLUENT OR SEVERELY DEPRESSED. THERE'S NO CHANCE OF BECOMING FLUENT, SO I'LL TRY HARD TO BE SATISFIED WITH TALKING ABOUT WHERE WE'RE GOING AND WHAT WE'RE EATING.
SO...I GUESS THAT'S THE YEAR. AND NOW I CAN ALMOST SAY "I'M COMING HOME THIS YEAR".
HAPPY NEW YEARS! (HAHA THAT ALMOST DOESN'T NEED AN EXCLAMATION MARK BECAUSE IT'S ALREADY CAPITALIZED)