Mom and Dad Say I Should Make My Life an Example of the Principles I Believe In... But Everytime I Do, They Tell Me to Stop It

Note to Readers: This post is a week late; I wrote it last Thursday, and parts may not be relevant anymore, but may still be amusing. I especially like the bit about the horse. Also important to note is that my webalbum has my pictures up for my Kyushu trip, and my New Years blog will be up… by Monday at the latest.

Second Note to Readers: This thar be my 50th blog! That thar be half of a hunnerd, arrrrr! Congrats to me, avast!

Oooh, last day before a full week off of work, yay! And that makes it desk cleaning day too. Which is probably good, I got teeth coming out of my ears! Well… not MY teeth… and not literally, thank goodness. But there are still a substantial number of teeth on and in my desk. As well as the collection of post it notes from work people that I’ve been saving since July. Pieces of wire, ear wax, and other fancy stuff. Well, fine, no ear wax, but there’s a bit of peeled skin in my drawer from the week of pain following Okinawa >< gross. Ooh, my learning objectives sheet! Excel graphs: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, and billions of food coupons. I gotta spend those. Holy crap there's a lot! Well, my hands are now black from all the dust in/around/under my computer. Sandpaper?!? When did I ever use sandpaper!? Rusty Kleenex, interesting… But this is a good example of Japanese office telepathy in action, everyone starts cleaning at exactly the same time!

And now back to work.

Well, the last day of the work year in Japan is good news for me. But first I’ll recap the events of the past week. Umm… Friday I went down to Wakayama with Jen, it was Keith’s birthday and so we were gonna go clubbing. So of course when we get there, the club is closed, even though the calendar says there’s an event scheduled for that night. We ended up playing ping pong and pool at Wakayama JJs instead. Stayed at Keith’s for the night, at lunch with him the next day, then went home when he went back to work.

Sunday, I went to the gym in the morning, then we went for all you can eat yakiniku in the evening. When we got to the place, there was a 2hr wait! Christmas Eve, what did we expect… so we put our names down, and try to look for another place… an hour and a half later with still no luck, we went back to the yakiniku place ><.

Work on Christmas Day, I was surprised how under-celebrated it was after all the decorations and lights. I went to Dylan’s place for a small Mexican Christmas dinner. Dylan’s a friend of Anton and Jen, the party was fun, but I had to leave early to make curfew, and so I missed Love Actually :(.

By Boxing Day Christmas decorations were virtually gone, it was weird, like Christmas never happened… which it barely did. I got some good gifts in the mail from my family though, which was very nice, including some money from my grandparents and great aunt, which was very much appreciated. And I got a bonus (or maybe taxes back) on my paycheck yesterday, can’t complain about that either.

Well, over the past 2 weeks (3 now) a lot of my fellow CJPers have returned home to Canada. Anton, Boon-hau, and Tongxin have left in the Kansai area, and more elsewhere in Japan. No more crazy old man adventures with Anton /cry. I’ll miss you guys, it’ll be a lot different here without you, but keep in touch and I’ll see you back in Canada! CJP Reunion Party Ohhhhh Yeah! Or you guys could come visit me in Calgary! Pffft >< Yeah right.

Mmm, one more night of dorm showers, then it’s… a night on a ferry… and then 4 nights of private showers!!! And then… a night on a ferry… and then dorm showers… That’s right, kicked out of my dorm tomorrow afternoon, and the trip to Kyushu begins. The plan is the same as before, except I’m taking the ferry instead of night train. Should be interesting, I’ll take pictures.

Still busy planning my post-Japan life, job searching for this summer and even looking at the school year and summer beyond. Applied for few more jobs this week, I wish I knew when they were hiring though. And if nothing else comes up, I’m considering doing a working holiday in Australia for 3 months in the summer! If anyone knows anything about working holidays… or Australia… or the cane toads that are taking over the north… let me know!

So yeah, no more blogs till probably Jan 7 or so, but there’ll be a big update then with tons of pictures yay! Happy New Year everyone!