We kicked things off with a Christmas eve party and gift exchange at a friend's apartment. It was a multicultural affair (as so many social events are for us here) with people from all corners of the globe in attendance. Our host, a Brazillian, even worked some magic to obtain a delicious roast turkey to share on the pot luck table. The turkey was so good that this woman could not help herself and just sat on the floor, picking at the remaining scraps on the bones while she chatted on her phone.
The party was loads of fun, and ended as most fun parties do, with everyone wearing any costume they can get their hands on and dancing in the kitchen.
The next day, Christmas, didn't feel much like Christmas because in Japan all the shops stay open, people still go to work and life carries on as usual. Since we have been here a while now, we followed suit and went to work (weird!). I had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon to get my knee checked out - it had been giving me a bit of trouble, but as most of you know, that is nothing new.... Christmas day was just another day for us.
As I have mentioned before, turkey isn't something that you can just drop by the supermarket to buy here. Nor is it something that you can cook in a typical Japanese kitchen with the "oven" that is scarcely big enough to toast a single piece of bread. So this year we booked ourselves a reservation at our of our favorite watering hole for turkey dinner. Yes, you heard me right, sacrilege and blasphemy, we ate our Christmas dinner in a pub this year. The pub is called TK6 (click here to see their website) and is run by a couple guys from Australia who serve up some of the finest international food in Sapporo. Our turkey dinner was no exception, everything was prepared to perfection and we left there stuffed.
Mmmmm... Turkey....We were joined by some friends and their families for dinner which helped to make the atmosphere more festive, particularly because there were a couple of kids running around the table wearing new clothes and playing with toys that santa brought them.
Shortly after Christmas, we had a guest join us for some snowy Sapporo fun. The Goose flew all the way from blizardy Alberta to rip up the ski slopes and ring in 2009 with us! Yeee Haw!
We all rocked out at karaoke together.
He spent a day at work with Shawn and SnowmobileLand. Unfortunately the day was slammed with tourists so there wasn't much fun snowmobile play time that day.
We rang in the New Year at another fun house party. This party was dominated by South Americans and as is typical of such a demographic, it degraded into a hip shaking dance party once the champagne and hugs were out of the way.
After a much needed day of rest, we rented a car and dove to the Daisetsuzan National park to see some fat snow. We had hoped to rent snowshoes there and wander around in the forest, but the rental place was closed for the holiday season. We settled for a ride on the ropeway to the top of Asahidake instead. Unfortunately, that day was a white-out blizzard at the top of the mountain so there wasn't much to see except white.
We returned to Sapporo and skiied and snowboarded on Teine mountain overlooking Sapporo. Aside from the ski school kids, there weren't many people on the hill and we had a great day. My snowboarding skills still lag far behind the Goose on skis (he is like a ballerina on those things!), but at least I am no longer leaving the hill concussed.
Keeping warm on the lift.
Me & Goosie looking over Sapporo.The Goose was so enamoured with the high tech Japanese toilet seats that he took one home with him as a souvenier. He phoned a friend on new year's eve to ask him to measure the dimensions of the typical Canadian toilet bowl to make sure it would fit, but his friend gave no reply and probably assumed the query was a practical joke or that we were all being drunk and silly.
What a fun winter holiday we had! So fun in fact, that we were too exhausted to return to work so we flew down to Okinawa for some hard earned rest and relaxation (we seriously did - I will post soon about the fun times there!).
Nice jacket Goosie!
