Surprise!

So I know that there might be a few family members who follow this, so I’ll write all about my excitement leading up to Christmas early, and just save the post for after I have left!

That’s right!

It is being kept from my extended family that I will be coming home for Christmas and New Year!  I leave back home in less than 2 weeks now, and will return shortly after New Year. :D  I’m so excited about it!  I can hardly wait to see the look on my little cousins’ faces when they see me there!  I know they miss me, and I miss all my family too!  It will be really nice to be able to see everyone again.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do the same next year, and if I was being 100% honest I’d kind of be interested in spending a Christmas in Japan.  I think, of course, it would be best if it was also with my family here.  I’d love to be able to take a trip though and spend Christmas here somewhere.  I say this now though, I might actually be more down than I imagine spending Christmas without my family.  I’m sure that I’d probably plan something with A-san if she were free, and some of my co-workers/friends here would most likely invite me to join them as well.  Not to mention gatherings that the other JETs here would plan.

I’ve also been trying to find small gifts to take with me for my various family members.  I think I have pretty much everyone, although at this point there are a few people that I’d like to find some small extra gifts for as well.  One of these days I may make another trip back to Izumo, (maybe even leave super early to purchase the items before my first flight) and get one or two more last minute items.  It’s not much, one of the things I was considering was replacing a phone strap I bought that is starting to get dirty and fall apart.  It still looks pretty right now, but I may save it for later.  I may also get one final set of chopsticks personalized for someone.  The difficult part of it all was actually finding the time to go and buy the gifts themselves.  One of the problems I found myself running into was the fact that the only time I really had to go would be on the weekends if they were open.  With Saturday English school, and other appointments it made it a little difficult.  But something I realized, maybe a bit late, was that when I do get out of school I actually still have time to go into town if I wanted too.  The malls don’t close until about 9 or 10, but what I risk is the hour drive home making me pretty late when I get back.  Then I have to get ready for school the next day.  I think if I really needed to I could, but I’d still rather save my trips for the weekend.

I still have the last few Christmas cards finish and mail home, and I also wanted to prepare/set up the presents I did buy already.  I thought of the idea of making little gift bags of stuff for all the many little ones we have in the family now.  I found a nice shop that sells little candies pretty cheap, so I bought a bunch and am going to give them to the kids.  Thinking about it know, there is one that I should have gotten something for, but I didn’t think about it until now.  I’ll have to go see if I can find something small before I leave.  I know that it should be fairly easy to find something, and maybe that day that I got back to Izumo.

These next few evenings are going to be pretty busy for me.  One thing I want to do before I leave is give the apartment a nice once over!  LOL I’ve got papers and various things littering all over the place.  I can’t even remember the last time my table in my room was cleared off.  It’s been filled with papers and flyers from various thing for weeks, and even after I bought some bins to sort them into, I still haven’t gotten around to it.  I also have some boxes from things I’ve bought that I need to break down as well.  I’m happy at least that the day I leave is plastic trash day (which I realize now is a kinda funny thing to be happy about…)!  That way when I come back I won’t have a super full bag of plastic trash to throw away.

It's that time of year!

It’s getting colder outside, and here in Japan we’ve already had a day of snow!  Sadly (or maybe not so much) it came and went in the same day…  I woke up that morning (thankfully a day off for me), and the ground was covered in beautiful white!  It even flurried a bit!  So with this colder weather, and the beginning of the last month of the year, comes many things.

First is to add furnishing to the apartment that will make it more winter friendly.  I’d already been using my heating blanket (a wonderful gift that makes sleeping at night pure heaven!), but I’d only wanted to use the little electric heater so much (it can be so expensive!).  One of the first things that I did recently to help make it warmer in the evenings is to purchase kerosene for my space heater (I also gave one to A-san as I had discovered on my first arrival that there was actually 2 in my apartment).  It was soooo nice that first evening that I added kerosene and turned on my heater for the first time!  I still need to figure out what some of the functions of it do (there are various lights and buttons on it, and of course like everything else it is all in kanji).  I’ll tell you this though, it sure makes my little room nice and warm!

Something that I’d found was happening though, as you learn in science heat rises.  This means that a lot of the time, my feet would be left cold.  There are a couple of remedies for this.  One would be to buy this kind of foot cushion that some stores sell that are supposed to keep your feet warm.  However, I don’t fancy keeping my feet in place like that though.  Lap blankets are nice, but as the name suggests they are usually on the small side so they don’t do much for your feet.  The other option was one that I had been toying with for a while, but was still very much on the fence about it.  As it happened (and kind of spur of the moment too), while I was in town the other day to buy a new thicker futon for winter, I found that at the same time they had some of their kotatsu items on sale as well!   The table was the lowest price I had ever seen it (even compared to Amazon!), and some of the basic and simple covers and mats were on sale for a really good price as well!  I was able to get all the items for it I wanted for under 10,000 yen! (a little under $100 at the current exchange rate)  As wonderful luck would have it, there was enough space for it in my living room, so now I keep nice and snug with my feet under the kotatsu, and the space heater warming the rest of me up!  I’m also considering buying a little hot water bottle as well.  The kind of cool thing about it, is that you can use it both to pour hot water in to keep you warm, or ice water in the winter to cool you off.  They also have some cute decorative covers for them too.  I might stop at Juntendo later to see about getting one.

This doesn’t help me much at school though…  Some of my schools are ok (seems like maybe only the smaller ones), they’ve already started using the heaters.  But the one I am typing in right now for example… not so much…  I think since it is just me and one other person (and this is one of the bigger staff rooms), it isn’t very cost affective to have the heater going.  So, I’m sitting here with my little lap blanket trying to keep warm.  I think it also doesn’t help that my desk is by the window side, so the cold radiates through it really easily.  It’s especially noticeable because the side of me facing the window is much colder than the other side…

 

The other adventure I’m in the middle of is getting Christmas preparations under way.  I’ve already bought, signed, and mailed the important Christmas cards; but I’m considering going to get a few more and possibly send them out this week.  I’ve also been looking for little Christmas presents that would be easy to send back home.  I’ve gotten quite a few done, but I’m probably still about halfway there…  I’ve only got 2 weekends left, and both of them have some events that may make going to town to shop a bit difficult.  I may have to do some late afternoon shopping this weekend to try and get most of it done.  If it wasn’t such a far drive, I’d consider going more often during the week, but by the time I’d get there, I’d have maybe an hour or so before the shops would close.  Part of the problem is trying to figure out what I’m going to be getting people.  I know that if I can decide that beforehand then it should make shopping faster.  The Daiso has been a big saver here!  One of the advantages to the 100 yen shop (Dollar Store) here is that a good portion of the items are in very good quality (way better than back home), and it allows me to get some nice trinkets for family back home.  As shipping can be a tad pricey, the other trick is to find items that won’t be that heavy or delicate to send.  There are a few cute and interesting items at the Daiso though that I think will make for some interesting gifts!

First Time at a Japanese Movie Theater!

Sorry this is from November, but I didn’t get to post it yet.  Here’s what I wrote without changes:

So, yesterday was my first time going to a movie theater here in Japan!  I invited A-san to join me, and we made a whole day of it!

The bigger movie theater is in Izumo’s mall YouMe Town ゆめタウン.  While Matsue also has one in Aeon mall, their showings of films don’t seem to be as wide of a selection as in Izumo.  The other advantage is that this bigger selection also often means that the more popular American films are offered in both dubbed Japanese, and English with Japanese subtitles. J  For our selection, we went to go see the final Hunger Games film Mockingjay Part 2!  As it is popular enough, it merited a world wide release which means we didn’t have to wait for it to come to Japan.  Now, ticket prices are much more expensive here, (unless you use a coupon or go on a special event day) you are looking at spending about ¥1800 per person!  But on the other hand, I don’t think it will be a common thing for me to go to since it is an hour drive from where I live.  It will most likely be for special occasions or a movie that I really want to go see.

When you go to buy your tickets you have to use this kiosk that is thankfully also translated into English on most of the buttons.  I did still run into one problem though…. I accidentally bought the wrong showing!  I had though the movie was going to be at 12:25, but actually the first English showing was at 3:20.  A mistake that I am sure I will not make again in the future!  If you ever go to buy tickets at a movie theater, be sure that you look at the showtimes with 字幕（じまく）which means subtitled, and NOT 吹替（ふきかえ）which means dubbed.  Thankfully an attendant was kind enough to help me change my ticket (something that might not be possible normally, but I think he has helping out a poor foreigner), and I was the only one that made the mistake, so A-san was able to purchase the right ticket from the start.  The change in time also meant that we had plenty of time before to go shopping!

We found a Starbucks in the mall (something I was grateful for in that I hadn’t had one in months!) and grabbed a coffee before we made our way around the mall.  I don’t even think we really got to see everything, but we did get to go to a good portion of the main places we wanted to go to.  I got a couple of nice sweaters and some warm shoes for winter.  I also may want to go back later and get some knee high sized socks for winter as well.  I also need to make it a point to check my waist and hip measurements for when I hope to find bottoms.  For the most part I know my measurements for the top (I’m more well-endowed on the top, which makes buying tops for me a bit difficult, but I’ve found some stores online that sell a bigger size), but I think there should be some skirts and such that I would be able to fit into.  It’s just a matter of finding the right size!  One of the things I’m looking into getting is a set of Uniqlo brand Heat Tech shirts.  I want to get a few that I can switch between in different colors, but they’re supposed to be one of the best for keeping you warm.  Hopefully there will be another good sale on them soon!  I want to get at least one or two for now, but they sometimes go down to almost half off!

We also found a really cool candy store that had all kinds of sweets for really cheap!  I might go back soon to get some more, but I managed to get a pretty good sized bag of candy for under ¥800!  My plan is to use them as my gift to the little ones, they can each grab a couple from the bag.  I might even use some of the bags mom gave me, or find some cute ones at Daiso or something, to make the little goodie bags.  A-san was able to check of some things from her list as well, one of the important ones being a new bag to use.  I’m thinking of doing something similar for my brown purse, as it is usually not big enough for weekend outings.  I will continue to be on the lookout though.

So the theater!  It was the 3^rd floor of the mall, which also had a giant sort of game area with crane games, and other video game machines.  The seats were nice, and the theater was very clean, so all in all it was a nice movie experience!  The movie itself was also pretty good, I’m a fan of the books so I was able to spot the big differences right away.  The only thing I was a little sad I didn’t experience was concessions, but there is always next time!

Before we went home we decided to make our way to the food court for dinner.  LOL of course we did get sidetracked by this cute store with stationary and other accessories, but it was hard to resist!  We made it to the food court (which had awesome food!  McDonalds for the non-Japanese food fans, and a good selection of Japanese dishes) right after.  At first I was dead set on getting an Omurice from one place, but after looking around more I found myself drawn to the Okunomiyaki one instead!  I got a green onion and mayo one that was absolutely delicious!  Perhaps I will visit the Omurice place next time!   After that it was pretty late already, so we made our way back to the car to make the hour trek back home!