Happy Holidays!
Hi Everyone,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Japan!
Christmas isn't as big of a holiday in Japan as it is in the U.S., but I did have a nice Christmas dinner (Japanese style) with my host family on Christmas eve and we had several Christmas themed Hippo activities and a potluck party with some of the neighbors. I made eggnog for the occasion (my first attempt but it turned out pretty well!). My host mom even borrowed and put up a little LED light-up Christmas tree. My host family also bought me a little box set of Japanese hiragana stamps as a Christmas gift which was really sweet of them, and it is helping me to learn hiragana characters. :)
While Christmas isn't as celebrated as it is in the U.S., New Year's is a very important holiday here. Today is the last day of work at the office before the new year vacation so, as is the Japanese tradition, this morning everyone helped clean the entire office. This type of cleaning even has a name - oosoji. Japanese people thoroughly clean their homes and offices at the end of the year in order to start the new year with a clean slate after the holiday. It actually makes a lot of sense. It's not all work either; at the end of the day, after all the cleaning we'll have an end of the year meeting/party with everyone in the office to celebrate and reflect on the past year.
In Japan almost everyone has vacation somewhere between the last weekend of December and the first weekend of January to celebrate the new year. Tomorrow I am traveling with my host family to Sendai, which is north of Tokyo, where my host father's mother lives. We'll spend several days with her, celebrating the new year together. I don't know that much about what we will do there yet, except my host mom has told me several times that it will be much colder there than in Tokyo, so I'll have to pack warm clothes!
On January 2nd we'll return to Tokyo and meet my mom and brother from Wisconsin who are coming to visit! I'm so excited to see them and show them everything here! Together we will go with my host family to visit Kyoto and Kagawa, 2 prefectures farther south in Japan to go sightseeing and visit some friends of my host family. I'm really looking forward to these next few weeks from which I'm sure I will have lots of photos to share with you, and I'm happy that I will be able to spend with both of my families :)
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Japan!
Christmas isn't as big of a holiday in Japan as it is in the U.S., but I did have a nice Christmas dinner (Japanese style) with my host family on Christmas eve and we had several Christmas themed Hippo activities and a potluck party with some of the neighbors. I made eggnog for the occasion (my first attempt but it turned out pretty well!). My host mom even borrowed and put up a little LED light-up Christmas tree. My host family also bought me a little box set of Japanese hiragana stamps as a Christmas gift which was really sweet of them, and it is helping me to learn hiragana characters. :)
While Christmas isn't as celebrated as it is in the U.S., New Year's is a very important holiday here. Today is the last day of work at the office before the new year vacation so, as is the Japanese tradition, this morning everyone helped clean the entire office. This type of cleaning even has a name - oosoji. Japanese people thoroughly clean their homes and offices at the end of the year in order to start the new year with a clean slate after the holiday. It actually makes a lot of sense. It's not all work either; at the end of the day, after all the cleaning we'll have an end of the year meeting/party with everyone in the office to celebrate and reflect on the past year.
In Japan almost everyone has vacation somewhere between the last weekend of December and the first weekend of January to celebrate the new year. Tomorrow I am traveling with my host family to Sendai, which is north of Tokyo, where my host father's mother lives. We'll spend several days with her, celebrating the new year together. I don't know that much about what we will do there yet, except my host mom has told me several times that it will be much colder there than in Tokyo, so I'll have to pack warm clothes!
On January 2nd we'll return to Tokyo and meet my mom and brother from Wisconsin who are coming to visit! I'm so excited to see them and show them everything here! Together we will go with my host family to visit Kyoto and Kagawa, 2 prefectures farther south in Japan to go sightseeing and visit some friends of my host family. I'm really looking forward to these next few weeks from which I'm sure I will have lots of photos to share with you, and I'm happy that I will be able to spend with both of my families :)
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