A Japanese Christmas

Some of you may wonder what I did on Christmas this year. I suppose i shall lift the vail of secrecy and enlighten you all to what a traditional Japanese Christmas looks like.

It all begins at 6am, when the Santa's get-away sleigh can still be seen fish-tailing across the clouds. All through the house, not a creature was stirring, except the young gai-jin attempting to make a good impression on his boss and co-workers. Much like every other Tuesday morning, the day starts with coffee and a freezing cold walk to the Starbucks for more coffee. By the time the hardworking foreigner reaches his work place his caffeine high is already wearing off. As he reaches the office door, his heart beating exponentially faster than humanly necessary -part in anticipation for the possible shower of "merry Christmas"s and cake and also in reaction to the 32 liters of crushed Guatemalan coffee bean liquid surging through his blood- he peaks in to see no creatures stirring. Disappointment and self-doubt flood his mind as he questions whether or not he should have taken the day off. So he turns the lights on and trudges to his desk where his head and eyelids weigh tons. After a short, seated cat nap, the flood of "Good Morning"s began. And thus was Christmas morning. No presents and No joy.

The day got better though. At noon, a teacher, one student and myself set out on the epic 45 minute journey to Osaka for what was supposed to be an English seminar where English teachers, such as myself, would be giving presentations and sharing hints and tips to become better teachers. Being the hardworking foreigner that I am, I agreed to do this seminar because being in Osaka with other people and students is infinitely better than sitting at my desk alone playing sudoku and crossword puzzles.
To my surprise, I find out that this is not, in fact an English seminar, it is actually a sports and international conference for students. All of the seminar events and all of the group work would be held in Japanese. So for the first 5 hours of the seminar i played pool at the community center because I was not expected to sit through lectures in Japanese. I cannot complain too much because the day was more exciting than my day would have been sitting at my desk trying to look busy until 415pm. The night ended around 10:45pm when all of the students were shuffled off to bed. I was made aware of a small shindig for the teachers involving beer and snacks. As it is not my nature to turn down beer from my superiors, or ever, I attended this party which started around 11pm. So once all of the teachers had arrived the meeting began. "WHAT A MEETING!!!!!" I yell in my head. "You tricky bastards, bribe me with beer to come to a business meeting at 11pm will you? Diabolical." We sat around a 30 pack of beer discussing the timetable and the possibilities of shortening the lunch period by 15minutes for the next day. This went on for nearly a half hour. I was about ready to stand up and leave when the beer was finally passed out.

Much like my "Italian Cake" incident in Naples, I was given two beers to begin at the party, I think partly out of pity for having to sit through a full day of being talked at in a foreign language and partly because i was seething at the pure evil which had occurred in this room. But eventually, a second round was passed out and I still had not touched my second beer. Being Japanese as they are, I was given another beer. So now in front of me sit 2 unopened Japanese beers and 1 half full can. (all of you that have been following my stories on this blog should already know my hate for Japanese beer)

Needless-to-say, day 2 of the camp was unremarkable, aside from the fire dill in the middle of our seminar which wasted a good 20 minutes, the same 20 minutes we valiantly attempted to save from the meeting the night before. I left Osaka and came back to work. And so I sit, with 4 other Japanese teachers in a large teacher's office, counting the minutes until i can go get drunk. Japanese office culture is strange indeed. Now i know why people tell me that they drink everyday...they need to in order to stay sane.

Overall, it was a fun couple of days. I opened my presents from my family a couple of days ago and my new ipod came in handy while killing time at the seminar.

mike