Mike's Here!

Merry almost Christmas!! I'm just three days away right now and even though I have to work on both the 24th and 25th I'm very excited for the holidays! Tomorrow is the last night of Hanukkah and it's also the emperor's birthday, so it's a national holiday for me. I'll celebrate by going to Interstellar with some friends, have a 回転寿司 (kaiten zushi, conveyor belt sushi) lunch, and have a Marvel movie marathon and do puzzles and play games at my place for the afternoon. We might also meet Kikumi for dinner, but she might have to work. I hope we can see her!

Last week at school went pretty quickly, it was mostly Christmas lessons and review games. All the classes made Christmas tree ornaments. They wrote an English Christmas or holiday message on side and drew pictures on the other side. There are only seven classes in Ishimine, so I made a paper Christmas tree for each class and they decorated their classes tree as they finished their ornaments. It was a lot of fun and the students really enjoyed it. We listened to English Christmas music and the students really liked checking out their tree after everyone finished and even looked over all the other classes trees.

On Friday I went out with Patrick to an 居酒屋 (izakaya, Japanese style casual food and drink restaurant). We didn't stay out late because we were both tired from the week, but it was really nice to have a little celebration of the last full work week of 2014.

Saturday I spent cleaning in preparation for Mike. I also got a beautiful Hanukkah/Christmas present from my aunt Debby and uncle Howard and cousins Molly and David. A home-made bag decorated with orange koi fish. I'm sure there will be pictures of it out and about in Japan in upcoming posts, so be on the lookout for that! Saturday night I took the shinkansen into Fukuoka for dinner before heading to the airport to grab Mike! His plane came in an hour late and we had a bit of a dash back to the train station. I had already bought shinkansen tickets to get us home quickly, but the last shinkansen leaves at 11:28 on Saturdays. With the delay, Mike came out of the baggage claim around 11:10. We caught the subway back to the main station in Hakata and got to the shinkasen just in time!

On Sunday Mike and I made royal icing with the ingredients my mom sent with Mike to me. I also had a ton of gingerbread cookies from my mom and I spent the morning decorating cookies. We finished just as my friends started arriving and we played board games well into the evening. Jake brought chocolate turtles his mom had sent him and we snacks on those and the more accident-prone gingerbread men that had arrived a bit beaten up. Eventually we decided to get some real food and went to てつ鍋　(Tetsunabe) in Kokura station for some delicious gyoza, 豚キムチ (buta kimuchi, pork kimchi), and 焼うどん (yaki udon, friend udon noodles). It was really nice and my friend had to catch the train home anyway, so being at the train station was great! It was a nice day.

Now I'm at school, but four out of six classes were canceled due to too many students having the flu. Tonight is my 忘年会 (bounenkai, end of the year party) with Shinozaki and I'm really excited! We're going out with our friend Marc, Tanya, Juha, and Kyoko for Christmas Eve and we'll have a potluck dinner on Christmas. The day after Christmas we will spend five days in Nagoya and be back in Kitakyushu for New Years. I'm not sure when the next update will be, since I will be in Nagoya next Monday when I normally update. I will try to update by the 30th, but I'm not sure! I will definetly have something up by the first week of the new year. Happy holidays everyone!