Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve!

Happy Christmas!

Dear Friends and Family (and Family-Who-Are-Friends and Friends-Who-Are-Family),

Happy Christmas! I've never written a Christmas letter before, only illustrated some of the ones Mum wrote. But it's December and I'm sitting in Starbucks in Tokyo Midtown and there are lovely lighted trees outside and "Carol of the Bells" is playing and writing a Christmas letter seems like the thing to do.

It was a good year! I was busy, which I much prefer to not being busy, and I had great friends and lots of fun! Almost every weekend had some combination of friends, food, karaoke, and drinks.

This was the year of a million Disney trips. I managed to stay away until May (my last visit was at the end of December last year), but couldn't stop going after that! I went to Disneyland in May, July, August, and September, and I went to DisneySea in June, August (twice), October, and November. All were pretty amazing and memorable, for the rides, the shows, the food, the souvenir mugs, and the friends! Especial love to Yoko and Andrew, who both spent five days at Disney with me this year (and only one of those days overlapped, which means that one or the other of them was with me on every Disney trip in 2010)!

I didn't travel as much in Japan as I wanted to this year, but I did manage to get out of Tokyo a few times! Clare and I started the year with a spontaneous trip to Nagano. We ended up spending a homeless night there, but we did visit temples, have snowball fights, and see monkeys in hot springs! January also had a little road trip to Kamakura, and I returned there again in September for zazen. In April, Yokohama was the site of a photoshoot, a Chinese food gorgefest, and really dodgy karaoke. There was an amazing, perfect day at the beach on Sarushima in August. And a couple weeks ago, Andrew and I had an epic Kansai weekend, visiting Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto. I also got out of Japan during Golden Week and had a few days in Americaland. Enjoyed the Mexican food and Target and seeing Mum and friends, but did not enjoy the culture shock!

Nagano, Kamakura, and Yokohama were also all stops on the tour during Tokyo Cousin Extravaganza in August (as well as two Disney days and plenty of hanging about in Tokyo)! Nicole and Erin and Brian came for a week and it was kind of epic. It was amazing to see them, and I was so happy for the opportunity to show them around some of my favorite places and have them meet some of my favorite people. And never forget the karaoke. It was really sad to see them go!

There were a few great nights of dancing and music! I got to see my favorite DJ, Shinichi Osawa, three times this year! Love! In other entertainment news, I went to my local Cirque du Soleil show, ZED, and saw Wicked in Osaka.

2010 also marked my one year Japanniversary, way back in March. I had a super Japanese weekend to celebrate. Karaoke, animation festival, tea ceremony, lacquerware! It was really nice; it'll be hard to beat for the two year Japanniversary this coming March, but I'll try!

I'll be working on Christmas day, but I hope to still have a good Christmas this year! Not sure what I'm doing for New Year's either, but hope that's amazing as well! Really not sure what 2011 will bring, but hope it involves more Disney, more good times with friends, and lots of fun! And, of course, any of you who want to visit are more than welcome!

Happy HO-lidays!

Much love,
Jen

P.S. I don't normally post a lot of pictures of myself on this blog, but I will for Christmas. One from each month! Nagano, Abercrombie, Tokyo International Anime Fair, Yokohama, Howard Amon Park, ZED, Disneyland, DisneySea, Disneyland, Halloween, Ikspiari, and Krispy Kreme. It was difficult to choose for a couple months! In particular, there just weren't a lot of pictures of me from February and April, so it was, like, "Which of these three stupid pictures of me is least stupid?" On the other hand, some months had too many! Anyway. Pictures!

Osaka Odyssey

Last weekend Andrew and I had a Kansai adventure! After work on Saturday night, I met him in Shinjuku and we got some dinner. Sweets Paradise, obviously a brilliant choice for an amount of food to eat before getting on a bus all night. After getting our all-you-can-eat money's worth, we and our cake babies managed to find the spot where we got our bus (totally just on some random sidewalk). We enjoyed the fact that our bus said "Fantastic Story" on the side, but night bus is neither the most luxurious nor the most comfortable way to travel. We enjoyed listening to music, and I enjoyed looking out the window when we were driving through the countryside (so many stars!), but sleeping was not really enjoyed.

Got to Osaka very early on Sunday morning and proceeded to get lost. Eventually found ourselves at that most Japanese of establishments, Starbucks. After breakfast and relaxing (the super comfy chairs were lovely after the bus), we visited Osaka castle where we took pictures and ate pineapple. Then it was about time for Wicked! First order of business on entering the theatre was to stop by the merchandise booth. I kind of wanted to buy everything; they had really good merchandise. I managed to restrain myself a bit and only purchased the souvenir program, an Elphaba phone charm, and a pouch with all the characters on it, super manga style! Then the show, which was totally fantastic! Really interesting to see it in Japanese (didn't understand it all, of course, but easy to follow since, oh, I'm pretty familiar with the show). Obviously some things don't translate well, linguistically or culturally, so it was interesting to notice how they translated some things (for instance, at the beginning of "What Is This Feeling?", where in English Elphaba sums up Galinda by calling her blonde, in Japanese she just flat out called her stupid). After the show, we checked into our super luxurious hotel, then went to the aquarium. After visiting our aquatic acquaintances, we had okonomiyaki, then headed back to our station and went to karaoke. Dessert from the conbini, probably our most bizarre photoshoot ever (recreating the Wicked poster), then sleeping (in a real bed! glorious!).

Planned to get up super early in the morning to go to Nara. Ended up resetting the alarm several times, but still got a good start, although we were pretty zombie-like for a while . It was a beautiful day (lovely weather the whole time, actually, sunny and pleasantly not cold), and it was fantastic visiting Nara. I'd been there before, but Andrew hadn't, so it was really enjoyable for me to get to see his reaction to THE DEER OF DOOM. I'd told him that they were everywhere, but he hadn't quite believed the extent of the craziness. We wandered a little at a temple I hadn't visited last time and then went to Todai-ji, which I had. It was lovely again! On our way back to the station, and for the sake of our documentary (there was a lot of videotaping going on all weekend), I plucked up my courage and fed the deer again. Made the great decision to not do it in the area near Todai-ji where there are a million deer and instead did it in an area where there were, like, two. Neither of them tried to bite me, so much more successful than last time! I was still kind of terrified though.

From Nara to Kyoto (nice nap on the train in between)! We went to Gion where we did some shopping (super luxurious Disney + WA-Qu store!) and found an amaaaaazing vegetarian restaurant. It was delicious and we were the only customers and it was kind of like it existed just for us. I got avocado taco rice , and it was so fantastic. Vegetarianism is in short supply in Japan, so it was a really lucky find! After a stop to sample and purchase yatsuhashi (my favorite Kyoto sweet, and maybe favorite Japanese sweet in general), we went to Kiyomizu-dera. It was my third time to visit, but it was well worth going again. It was almost closing time when we got there, so it wasn't crowded, and the atmosphere was so different in the dark. Really beautiful and a bit spooky and just lovely. We headed back to Kyoto station after and enjoyed Starbucks and karaoke (we weren't sure about the amazingness of it before we eventually discovered a treasure trove of DisneySea songs) before getting the bus back to Tokyo.

It was such an amazing weekend! I was pretty impressed that we managed to do as much as we did in the short time we had, especially as it felt like we were doing things at a pretty leisurely pace. It was lovely to visit Kansai again - both to revisit placed I'd loved before and to see some new things - and see the show and just relax. Happiness!

But the company was kind of the best part.