Kurisumasu in Japan

It's kinda odd... Today is supposed to be the day after Christmas, but the rain is absolutely pouring down and I was at work both yesterday and today ... that Christmas spirit is proving to be a bit elusive, to say the least. But no matter, even in Japan Christmas does have a certain charm.

Like even more packed shopping streets than usual. Huge electric billboards proclaiming "Happy Christmas". Rightly so, I'd say... I'm bored with all these merry Christmases anyway ... this year, I want a Happy one! :-)

As usual, I did most of my gift shopping just before the big day. Running around Akihabara 4 days before Christmas is _not_ recommended - ridiculously many people! I did find the gifts I was looking for, though. Eventually.

I spent Christmas eve at Restaurant Stockholm together with my Swedish student / Japanese teacher, eating a typical Swedish Christmas dinner. There was meatballs and sausages and ham and salmon and potatoes and even some of Janssons temptation (although suspiciously low on anchovies). And along with my dessert, I even had a glas of punsch... (very sweet Swedish alcohol - yummy!). Haven't had anything like that in years.

And I almost forgot the most interesting thing that's been going on the last couple of weeks - there's been "bounenkai" almost every single day. "Bounenkai", in Japanese, pretty much means "forget-the-year-party", and that's what it is. It's a closing of the previous year, so that we can start the new year fresh. I've had Bounenkai with my team at work, with one of my networking groups, a company wide bounenkai and then one with my soccer team. And a bunch of christmas parties adds in to that, too... It's been a bit crazy.

In Sweden, and to some extent in the US too, Christmas is a holiday you should celebrate with your family. (To Swedes, Christmas is what Thanksgiving is to Americans ... a time to eat all the good stuff in the house and meet all the relatives). New Years Eve, however, is typically a big party.

In Japan, it's pretty much the opposite. Christmas is a reason to party and give and get gifts, whereas New Year is a family occasion. Of course, having no relatives or family here, for me they will both be party occasions. :-) And then Sue is coming in a few days, so that'll be even more fun!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a MERRY NEW YEAR, everybody!!!

Japanese christmas pics will be up soon... Finally!

One Down, Two To Go (with pictures!)

A couple weeks ago one of the three Swede's at KDDI went back to Sweden. He was kind of split on whether he really wanted to leave, but his contract was up, so he didn't really have much choice. I guess it's nice to be home in time for the holidays, though. I should try that sometime. So now we're only two Swedes at KDDI. And one French guy, and one Dutch.

Since he was leaving, we had to send him off in style. We've been going to a lot of Korean restaurants this fall, so that was obviously how we had to start the night. We then went on to Karaoke and was considering clubbing, but after we got a good deal on a karaoke room and 飲み放題 (unlimited drinks) for the whole night, we realized it was better to make good use of that. Imagine! 2500 Yen, about $20 or not even 200sek, per person for a karaoke room and unlimited amounts of beer, drinks, whatever you prefer. And nowhere to go until the trains start running at 5:30am ... time to ROCK! :-)

There's bunches of pictures here. The guy with shortest hair is Peter, who is now back in Sweden. Just FYI.

Weird Party

My, I've been lazy. There really hasn't been much in the way of updates lately, has it? Sorry about that. Sometimes I guess I'm just too busy actually doing stuff to have time to sit and write it down. :-)

Two weeks ago, Saturday, I was strolling around Odaiba (sort of a high tech island here in Tokyo, as if the rest is not enough high tech) when my Japanese teacher / language exchange partner, Ari, called. One of her co-workers was throwing a wine party on saturday night, and would I like to join her there? Sure, it's a party, I need to meet more people.

So in the evening we met up in Meguro, me late, as usual. After some trouble with the cab-driver and the instructions we had for finding the place, we finally got there. The house seemed empty and deserted, and since we were like three hours late we thought maybe the party was over. Luckily, I suppose, the wife of the family, Ari's co-worker, arrived just then in her car. So yes, we were at the right location, and the party was indeed still going on. We got in.

There were loads of good food and decent wine, not bad at all. But there was a strange atmosphere at the party ... the wife was around 30, Japanese, and her husband was around 50, western. And even if she is indeed quite smart (I don't know; she might be), she kept walking around and pushing her boobs out so much I was worried her back might snap. Yes, it did look that weird. She didn't say much either, mostly smiled and kissed her husband ... Creeped me out. Can anyone spell "t-r-o-p-h-y w-i-f-e"?

Then, since she was around 30, most of her friends were as well, and most of his friends were similar to him. So now, we have a party were most (if not all) women are Japanese, late 20's, early 30's, and almost all the guys are western and getting close to (if not way past) 50. They had all been in Japan for at least 5 years, and were quite successful, running their own companies or managing other people's.

These guys were definitely not beyond hitting like crazy on those girls, either... It just felt really weird. I mostly hung out with a group of young Japanese people, a couple guys and a bunch of girls who were all really nice.

Anyway, obviously, this was not one of those nights when I went on partying all through the night. I made sure to hit the last train home in the evening...

There is a little epilogue to this party too. One of the guys there, let's call him C (this guy is definitely not above googling his own name, so that's why I'm not spelling it out) spent most of the evening acting like a teenage boy .... and I don't mean that in a good way. He had somehow made it a goal to get to see the underwear of as many girls as possible ... as soon as he got them one by one he tried to convince them to show him their panties. Sometimes it worked out, too. All very strange and quite creepy. Anyway. He also took lots of pictures, and so he sent some to me. All nice and dandy. But just when I thought he had actually done something normal, I reached the end of the email ... and there, attached, was a huge picture of C together with Keith Richards... Weirdest thing. It's like name-dropping, only worse ... picture dropping! I was just like ... well, there really isn't much to add to that.

The world is full of weirdos.