winter

It's a typical December day in western Japants.

The wind-chill is below freezing, my sliding door and window are open to try and suck out some of the dust from my very unfiltered living space, and I look like this -->

That's a warmfuzzysweater underneath my Dinosaur Comics hooded sweatshirt. I would have another full layer underneath my warm corduroy pants, except I am washing just about every piece of cold-weather underthings and overthings that I own.

Why? 'Cause for Hokkaido adventures commence in 72 hours \o/ And after THAT? Touhoku adventures. And then Chubu adventures. I'ma wandering down the local train network (well, starting off on the expresses because I realized there's no feasible way to get from Sapporo to Akita in a single day otherwise x.x durrrrrrdurrdurr I fail geography), stopping off at a few of the larger cities on my way back down to Kansai.

I initially had no plan whatsoever but to maybe try a couple of the inns / hostels I happened across in the metropolises, and take refuge in 24-hour internets cafes if that didn't work out. But as departure day approached I got to thinking maybe my spirit of adventure would be less dampened if I had an actual sleeping room for sleeping times. To that end, I joined this couchsurfing / international exchange network a Siberian dude at a dinner party told me about, and sent off one request for crashspace for each of my stopoff points, not expecting to have much luck given that it's the holidays and most people are off having their own fun travels.

The morning after I sent the requests, I'd gotten affirmatives from all three peoples :D These are vouched-for and peer-reviewed experienced hosts, with confirmed identities / addresses and so on, so safety factor is high. The network is very efficiently self-regulating in that respect, to minimize on creepers. PLUS they all sound like for-seriously awesome people! Two of the three have been around the world and back again, one of 'em is actually a current JET, and one is a BRAIN SURGEON. SUPERNIFTY.

I am all kinds of excited about this trip ~/o/ (that is me running around with my arms out making whooshing noises)

Happy St. Nicholas Day (belated)

Upon the feast day of Santa Claus 1.0, I found myself back in Nagoya again, gettin' presents for myself and others. Would have gotten my parents' Christmas box, except the post office tends not to deliver big honkin' boxes when there is no one to which they can hand 'em over. But it got re-delivered tonight, and I gotta say, for spending a week derping through the international post system, those cookies sure aren't too pulverized :D Yay!

While in Sakae, I found the perfect way to illustrate to many hiLOLities of Kurisumasu-toki in Yapan:
Yes, that is the Colonel. Yes, KFC's Colonel. Doesn't your family uphold the cherished Western tradition of the Christmas bucket o' chicken parts? Heathens!
(and incidentally, yes, this IS a digital picture of a picture on my cell phone...I um, left my memory card at the office. Oh technology.)

The other main activities of Christmas are eating big white-frosted cakes with strawberries on them and going on dates. Perhaps dates where you eat big white-frosted cakes with strawberries on them, I dunno. The general atmosphere of Christmas and New Year's is basically the reverse of what it is in the States, except only New Year's Day is a national holiday here.

Luckily, this year the school is giving everybody the three weekdays leading up to January 1 off, no paid leave needed, thus I will be spending the holiday season up in Hokkaido :3 There I will hopefully see such wonders as their free-range moss balls (this is not a lie), only-two-snowballs snowmen, and the Japanese yeti (this may or may not be a lie).