It's that time of year again. That's right, it's time to ring those bells and turn around, ring those bells and turn around, ring those bells and turn around, for Christmas time has come!

You're welcome.

It's actually been that time for the past month, but I have very considerately spared you until now. I should note that this song can be made less "Augh! Stick a fork in my ear!" by handing some bells to a bunch of adorable toddlers and watching them go nuts with glee. Even better if, upon ending the song, your favourite toddler hands his bells back to you and exhaustedly remarks on how tired he is now.

Christmas decorations went up at work today. Liam and his classmates helped, which means that for a while there all the decorations on the tree were grouped in one tiny spot no higher than the tallest child.



Liam is definitely old enough now to appreciate all the finer aspects of Christmas, ie, Santa. Show the kid a picture of Santa and watch excited hysteria ensue. He is going to go to Scotland! In an airplane! And Santa is going to bring him every Thomas toy ever made! Oh, and something about seeing Grandma and Granddad, too.





He is not crying or upset in that first picture, I promise. He just appears to have reached that age where if he has to think too much about how to smile, he can't actually do it.

Afterwards I gave him my phone to take pictures with. Among the more useable ones are this close-up of his car and the rather interesting perspective of what the tree looks like from only three feet up.





The good news is that I have finished all my Christmas shopping. The bad news is that I am not sure when stuff is going to get mailed out. Hopefully tomorrow, but I elected to turn the rest of my overly ripe persimmons into bread tonight instead of getting stuff ready for the post, so we'll see.

Eventually this unseasonably warm weather is going to break, and I am going to cry like a baby. And then complain a lot about being cold. Fun for everyone!

The hole in my ceiling closet has been repaired. He also replaced my showerhead/hose, as that was well past its prime. Now that I have full water pressure again, it's a little overwhelming. I'd forgotten just how strong that is. Sort of like having your hair rinsed out by a horde of elephants.

Last night I threatened to beat my students to death with the tea tray if they continued their impromptu concert of "Last Christmas". I hate that song even more than I hate Twilight. My current idea of hell is having Edward sing it to me while in full sparkle. At some point in the near future, though, I'm going to have to stop threatening them with death and come up with a lesson plan for Howl's Moving Castle. Masami and I thought reading a book together would be a good thing for that class, since they don't use a textbook and the lessons don't really have any focus right now. Masami still thinks this is a good idea, but I have since realized that I have to come up with some way to actually use the book as a teaching mechanism and have changed my mind. In retrospect, going with Nami's Twilight suggestion would have been easier: "Does this week's chapter suck more or less than last week's chapter? Discuss."

All right! The top half of the closet has been cleaned up in preparation for Closet Man's Tuesday visit, wherein he will replace the entire ceiling of the closet. I even managed to make some organizational improvements to the bottom half of the closet, and I would be feeling pretty good right now if it weren't for the fact that now I have to figure out where to store all the stuff from the top half for the next day and a half without tripping over it all the time. I think at this point the best thing to do is to sit down with a hot drink and mentally work it out before plunging back into the fray.

Every time I do a real clean, I am struck by two things. 1) I really need some of those home makeover people to come by and yell at me until I finally throw some stuff away, and 2) I need to start wearing a hair net 24/7.

The temperature dropped again, this time probably for good. Daytime was nice, all sunny and warm, but once that sun goes down...I know that in a month I'll be thinking wistfully of indoor temperatures that have two digits, but for right now 13/14 is making me chilly.

I was supposed to have lunch with the kids at the kindergarten today and practice our song for their winter festival (This year we are doing Eensy-Weensy spider...or as the program has it, Eens-Weensy Spider. I didn't have the heart to correct them.) But so many kids are out with the flu that not only was that pushed to next week, my usual four classes were condensed into two. Frankly, with that many absentees, I'm surprised they were even open.

Heard from my travel agent today, and my visa should be ready by next week. Which is rather more than the four working days I was originally told, but hey, I'm in no hurry. Chevy, please tell me that a) the Chinese are better than the Japanese at heating their homes, or at the very least that b) people who live in swank embassy apartments are warm? Everyone else, brace yourself for four and a half months of me moaning about how bloody cold it is.

Things you do not see every day: Japanese country bands covering Johnny Cash outside pachinko parlours.

Well, jeez. No wonder my place is so cold when the temperature drops. I was rummaging around in my closet today and felt a draft, so I looked up, and the ceiling is partially gone up there, and there's a distinct breeze floating in through the roof. (In my defense, my bedroom is usually pretty dark and I generally just stick my hand in my closet and grab whatever I need. Plus it's not on the side of the closet I store my clothes in. I mean, I'm guessing this is a newsih development, but honestly, it could have happened anytime in the last few months. And if there was a crack up there for a while before that...) I guess this is a job for the landlord? I will bring it up to Masami on Monday.

I may have to defriend Abby. What heinous thing has she done, you ask? She sent me a Christmas present already. Wrapped and everything. That level of organization a) is clearly [i]insane[/i] and more importantly, b) makes me look bad. However, I guess it is that time of year and I do need to get organized. I'd like to have everything done by the beginning of December, if possible, so that I'm not spending a small fortune on airmailing everything.

Speaking of Christmas, I'm off to the travel agent's today to pay for my ticket to Shanghai and start the visa application process. Happily, I think the Chinese visa will take up a whole page, so my new passport is off to a good start.

Ok, now I'm just annoyed. It is around 25 degrees and sunny. Where was this weather last week when I was touring around Kyoto?

I've decided I don't much care for starting work mid-week. Finishing mid-week is fine, but starting just leads to lots of "wait, what day is it today? What time do I have to be at work? Oh crap, I should have made up some new lesson plans already!"

As I indicated earlier, the weather is Kyoto wasn't the greatest. It was gorgeous here on Saturday, though. The Matsui's were in town and they took me out to the flower park, where there is some sort of international shrubbery exhbibition, and it was hot hot hot. I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and wishing I'd opted for some more summery clothes. But on Sunday, by the time I got to Kyoto at 11:30, the sky had clouded over and it was spitting on me. I walked to/around Toji near the station for a while, as it had a pagoda and a flea market, but when I got there the flea market was packing up due to the rain and I couldn't figure out how to get a good view of the pagoda, so I headed off to the hotel to drop off my suitcase (I was worried that all my nice dry clothes packed inside were getting wet by this point). By the time I got there, the rain was pretty much coming down in one solid sheet of water, and if it had been a fancy hotel with a big bouncy bed or a couch instead of six tatami mats and a futon, there is a strong possibility I would have spent the afternoon curled up indoors with a book. But luckily (?) I persevered and headed off to Nanzenji, which was within easy walking distance. I'll admit it was beautiful in the rain, but after a while both my socks and shoes were soaked (not to mention my jeans to the knee), so I decided it was time to go off in search of Kyoto shopping.

My outlook on life improved considerably after I bought dry socks.

In addition to a tiny bathroom, my hotel boasted a large public bath in the basement. A soak would have been really nice, but by the time I got back to my room and into some dry pajamas, there was no way I was able to leave the room again. Instead I just flopped on the futon and watched a bit of The Bourne Supremacy dubbed in Japanese before passing out.

Monday dawned more promising, with sun breaking through the clouds. I headed off to the Takao region outside the city, where I climbed lots of steps (at one point I passed a rather rotund Japanese man as I was going back down, and he glanced at me and puffed in English "Give up!", to which I cheerfully replied "Gambatte!". It's easy to be smug when you're the one going downhill. Unfortunately, I did something tweaky to my knee, because for the next few days whenever I walked downhill it hurt. Huh?) and took in lots of beautiful mountain views.

Aaaaand then it started raining again.

Apparently there's this hike you can do from Jingo-ji to the town of Arashiyama, where there is a train station and a foot bath, and I really wanted to do that. But after walking for an hour (through a very pretty trail area along a river), it started raining even harder and the signs were pointing in opposite directions to different shrines, but no indication of which way would bring me to the town. Now, I'd passed a couple of girls (wearing smart white woolen coats, skirts, and knee-high boots...for a walk that involved mud and climbing over rocks, mind you) so I knew there was something out there, I just didn't know where. By now it was raining pretty hard and I was getting wet feet again, darkness was coming on, and I had no idea where I was. If this had been the middle of a sunny spring afternoon, I probably would have just kept on walking, but under the circumstances I decided to go back.

The bus ride back took an hour and when I got off I discovered that winter had arrived. I don't know exactly how cold it was, but I'd say under 10C. My clothes were far too light for a rainy 10C, and the wet feet and damp hoodie didn't help matters. An enourmous cup of Starbucks tea, new knee-high dry socks, and a 40 minute foot massage later, I was much better equipped to handle the weather.

Once again, I did not make it to the public bath.

Tuesday! Tuesday dawned sunny and promising, if somewhat chilly. I started off at Heian-shrine, which was right up the road from my hotel. There I was stopped by a group of adorable 12 year olds on a school trip. They had to converse with me in English, get my signature (ooh, how film star!) and take a picture with me as part of a school assignment. After that I headed out to Kinkakuji, the famous temple covered in gold leaf. At this point the sun actually broke out through the clouds and lit up the temple and lo! It was shiny! I took many pictures and considered myself happy and treated myself to a cup of matcha and a tiny cake in the tearoom.

Aaaaaaaand then it started raining again. I walked around for a bit more and found a very pretty little untouristed shrine, then gave up and hopped on a bus back to the station. I told myself that there were some sightseeing points around the station and I could go see them, but yeah. That didn't happen. I got to the station, decided I quite liked being dry and warm, and wandered around the shops until it was time for my train. I also found a restaurant specializing in Japanese pickles, and since those are one of my favourite things ever, I had a lunch of rice and pickles. Nutritious? Probably not. Tasty? Hellz yeah.

And then I came home and embraced my sock drawer (so many dry socks! All mine!) and fleece jackets (it's a miracle I didn't cave and buy a new one in Kyoto. Well, not so much a "miracle" as an "inability to find a Uniqlo before closing time") and it was freezing here, too. I didn't want to set up the kotatsu just yet, since it is getting warmer again this weekend, so I just dragged the heater out and plugged it in and wrapped up in a blanket.

So far I am pneumonia-free.

Day 2: frequent cold showers, more of the same tomorrow. Yesterday I thought Kyoto was trying to drown me. Now I understand. It's trying to give me pneumonia.

A damp, chilly, excessively rainy Sunday afternoon is the perfect time to curl up with a good book & a cup of tea. It's less great for sightseeing around Kyoto.