December 15, 2020 – February 15, 2021
Places we Traveled:
Tsukuba, Ashikaga, Kyushu, Nagano
Well, I fell off the wagon a bit on life updates. In December, I started working part time. Between work and the holidays, I convinced myself I could get caught up on the blog “eventually.” I would hate to disappoint my loyal readers (mom), so here we go! A big 2-month update, without further ado:
Peaks:
- Our Japanniversary! December 15th marked the end of our first year living in Japan. It hasn’t gone exactly to plan, but I think you can tell from the blogs that we’ve been doing our best to have a good time anyway. We decided to celebrate by recreating our first meal together in Japan – yakiniku. However, this time we made a reservation at a much nicer restaurant to gorge on hot beef.
- Christmas, obviously! Since we didn’t move halfway across the globe this year, we were much better prepared for Christmas festivities. We even made the hour-long trek out to Tsukuba’s Costco for American bacon, aged cheddar cheese, and of course – the Costco wine advent calendar. Andrew will be the first to admit (and me not far behind) that it was too much wine to commit to drinking in one month. About the rest, I have no regrets. For Christmas eve dinner, I bought Tochigi wagyu from a fancy department store and did my best to recreate my mom’s amazing prime rib Christmas dinners. For Christmas morning, I made a big breakfast – bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, fresh fruit – and we opened presents.
- KFC Christmas Chicken. Ok, so I know I wanted to cook a big traditional Christmas feast. But I also wanted to experience the magic that is KFC Christmas Chicken. Some past marketing genius at KFC successfully convinced the entire country of Japan that the most traditional thing to eat for Christmas is fried chicken. Now, every year KFC goes all out on their Christmas campaign, and for some reason EVERYONE BUYS IT. A month in advance, I pre-ordered the “Christmas Barrel” for just Andrew and I to split. It came with 8 pieces of fried chicken, shrimp gratin, Christmas cake, and a commemorative plate – I added coleslaw and biscuits, because. Just, because. I’m definitely glad I did it once, but I can’t say that I’ll be sad to leave this tradition in Japan.
- Japan’s winter illuminations. I don’t know how I didn’t notice them last year. Every winter, all over Japan, parks and public spaces will go all-out to create incredible winter illuminations. Like, thousands and thousands of twinkle lights illuminating the park. Light up flowers, animals, castles, arches, and more. It is absolutely incredible. We visited 3-4 different illuminated parks this winter. Also, side note, since we’re wearing masks everywhere our faces stay nice and warm as we wander around. Silver lining!
- New Year’s holiday road trip around Kyushu. New Year’s is one of the most important holidays in Japan. Typically, workers get ~1 week off of work, and people travel to their hometown to spend the holiday with their family. Andrew got a week off, so we took the opportunity to fly to Kyushu, the island just south of Japan’s main island. I’ll keep it brief here and promise (really promise) to write a full post about our trip to Kyushu. It was amazing, and I look forward to reminiscing soon.
- I finished my quarantine project!!! As the first state of emergency rolled into place last year, I started working on this crochet pattern called Mandala Madness. I did NOT expect it to take so long or get so large. I love it, I hate it, I love it. You know?
- I bought a handmade donabe in Mashiko. Ok this one is for the fellow kitchen gear nerds out there. This clay pot is used on direct flame, mostly for comforting hot pot dishes cooked communally at the table. I love it, full stop. It’s beautiful and hot pot is fun to cook. Everyone should cook more hot pot!
- We celebrated Andrew’s second birthday in Japan! I made a big pasta dinner and picked up a cute little cheesecake from a local bakery.
- Road tripping around Nagano. One of our bucket list items for Japan was to see the snow monkey onsen. Located in Nagano, this is (I think) the only place in the world where monkeys exhibit this behavior. The story is – back in the day, monkeys saw Japanese people relaxing in the numerous natural hot spring baths. Looked nice, so they decided they wanted to give it a try. Apparently, the hot spring owners in the area got tired of chasing monkeys out of their baths, so the snow monkey park in Nagano was built. Now they have an area to soak in peace away from people. They have a livestream in the park, so we got to share the link with our families live and wave at them from the side of a monkey onsen. Oh, and we saw some famous castles and temples in the prefecture too.
- We finally got our finished pottery back from the workshop we did in Mashiko last September! It is very cute!
Valleys:
- Well, we both failed the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). But just barely! 4 more points and I could have a useless certificate to brag about. Ranging from N1 (native level) to N5 (beginner), the JLPT is a standardized test administered twice a year. The N4 exam equates to like, advanced beginner-level Japanese. It wouldn’t really be helpful for getting a job or proving competency. I knew it would be a stretch for me, but my teacher and I decided to give it a shot. You win some, you lose some.
- My first major earthquake experience in Japan. We’ve felt a few, mostly very minor, earthquakes during our time here. I can probably count on one hand the number of times the early warning alarm for earthquakes has been triggered on my iPhone. Around 11:00pm on February 13th, hovering at the edge of sleep, the shaking started maybe a half second before the alarm went off. In our area it was an “upper 5” on the Japanese scale. Some areas of the city lost power for a few hours, but not us. The extent of our damage was a photo frame tipping over on its shelf. Other areas of Japan experienced more chaos, but no major damage reported anywhere.
- For a brief and beautiful moment this ice cream sandwich existed. And then it left. RIP.
