Snow in Tokyo

Happy Coming of Age Day! Or Adult's Day, depending on who's translating it. If I understand correctly, this is the day where everybody who's turned 20 in the past year goes to City Hall and participates in some sort of ceremony celebrating the fact that they are now officially adults. For me, this means a 3-day weekend.

As I've mentioned before, I was sick over the holidays. A bit of a bummer, but it led to a very quiet and peaceful holiday season. Just me and my books, movies and games. And a cat that was very happy to have me settled at home and providing a lap for her morning, afternoon and evening naps. I'm here to serve!

Right after the holidays, I was the Embassy duty officer. I hit the trifecta for defining a good duty officer week in Tokyo: no deaths, no arrests and no calls that woke me up in the middle of the night. It was wonderful! I've also realized that the switchboard ladies, who screen A LOT of calls, are a gift from God.  

Between work, fighting off colds and being duty officer, this is the first healthy and free weekend I've had in nearly 2 months. I'm so happy! On Saturday, I went to self-defense class, got my hair done, and went to Shibuya for bread and cream puffs. Yesterday was a fun and productive shopping trip up to Yokota AB. Plans for today fell through, but it's turned out to be a good thing, as I have a home to-do list right now that could fill up about 4 days. I woke up to a rainy day, so spending the day puttering around the house looked to be perfect.   

And then the good puttering day became even more perfect when I looked out my window and saw this.

Snow!  The picture above was taken a few minutes ago.  The one below was taken earlier in the day, during one of my forays to the storage unit to put away Christmas decorations.

I think it's time for hot chocolate and some homemade individual turkey and apple pot pies!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Tokyo! My first holiday season in Tokyo was pretty uneventful, because I was trying to fight off a cold the entire month. 

For those of you who were wondering how the Japanese celebrate Christmas – I understand that it’s primarily a couple’s holiday here in Japan. People get together with their significant other and eat… KFC chicken and cake. Yep. KFC. Whoever started that ad campaign was BRILLIANT. I was a rebel though. I did not spend my holiday eating KFC. 

I did make it out to afternoon tea at The Peninsula with a couple friends. It was a very nice tea. It was the first time in a long time that I really liked ALL of the savories (the little sandwiches and quiche), as opposed to eating those so I felt less guilty about eating the sweets. In this case, I think I liked the savories more than the sweets, but the scones with the homemade raspberry jam were pretty wonderful also. In the interest of full disclosure, I think I like the afternoon tea at the Ritz better though. The Ritz has a very impressive view of the city, as the lobby is on the 45th floor, and the service is excellent. The waiters are all very attentive about pouring your tea and making sure you have enough hot water. At the Peninsula, you had to pour your own tea (after the first pouring) and call a waiter over to ask for more hot water. Nothing wrong with that, but just not as nice. (The Ritz also had a little box with all of the tea that you could sniff at to help you choose which one you wanted. So cool!!) 

Marunouchi

 After tea, we walked through the Marunouchi area to Tokyo Station, a very nice train station that was recently renovated and where they put on a pretty cool light show. I couldn’t see it all that well from where we were standing, but I saw enough to be impressed, and then – since this is Japan – I found it on YouTube when I got home! 

Speaking of lights… I saw several rather impressive light installations around the city over the course of the last month. In Omotesando, there were several Disney-themed displays in honor of the 110th anniversary.

In Roppongi Hills, there was a giant illuminated egg. They actually referred to it as a “symbolic amber objet d’art”, but I thought the objet d’art looked like an egg. It was still pretty cool.

 And the weekend before Christmas, I stood in a LONG line for an hour and a half to see the light installation at Roppongi Midtown, which you can watch for yourself here.

Roppongi Midtown

So now it’s New Years, which is the big holiday here. The town is QUIET. A lot of people have left town to go be with their families. Everybody is spending these first days going to their local shrine to ring the bell and pray. I’ve heard it’s crazy crowded at the shrines. If they’re not at the shrine today, then they’re probably at the department stores shopping. I, on the other hand, spent New Years Day having my traditional Lord of the Rings marathon, and I headed back to work today.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2013!