Christmas in Japan

I’m not going to lie, I found this very difficult. This is maybe the second time I’ve felt the pain of homesickness, and it’s not nice. Working on Christmas day, getting up, putting a suit on, no presents, no church, it all felt very odd. I made Christmas cards for the year 5 and year 6 children who didn’t receive one from Britain; I have to say it was nice to be able to give someone a card on Christmas day. I would have liked to have spent the evening with some English speaking mates who could possibly understand why Christmas is so important, but the end of year staff party got in the way.

I don’t dread these affairs as I did on first arriving. At first these were horribly difficult, wanting to make an impression but linguistically limited, wanting to be my normal overly boisterous self but confined by wariness of cultural differences.

However on Christmas day I solved both these problems by getting SERIOUSLY drunk.

If I could remember what happened I’m sure it would make fantastic reading, but sadly my memory only goes as far as a whisky drinking competition, that I seem to remember winning. I may have won that battle, but Suntory pure malt 10 year old won the war. I was informed the next day that apparently I had been ruffling people’s hair, kissing them on the cheek and assuring them that I did in fact love them. Which was jolly nice of me.

After waking up at 4.30am on Boxing day I was able to exchange presents with people at home over skype, which along with the 50 Christmas cards my kids had made me adorning my wall, gave me a generous injection of Christmas spirit. I got a man city away shirt with cooke sensei written on the back!

All in all then, a pretty good Christmas. I would say it was one I’d never forget but I’m already down by 9 hours as it is.

Hic.