Now that the Japanese New-Year cards have been delivered (they're delivered en masse on New Year's morning), I can show the cards we sent this year:

Our Christmas 2005 Card For friends/family outside of Japan

Our New Year 2006 Card For friends/family within Japan

They were actually both exactly the same size, but our address info took differing amounts near the bottom, and they got lopped off for this post.

The New Year card has a dog in the upper corner (2006 is the year of the dog), and the spinning top under “Happy” is a traditional new-year's image (for reasons I must still ask about). The wreath-like thing on the Christmas card is also a traditional new-year's image in Japan, but it also worked well on a western-style Christmas card, so I went ahead and used it.

In a previous post I described a bit about how these got made, and in yet a different post, I gave a short intro to Japanese New Year cards.

Among the cards we received today was this one, from a friend. If you read the short intro to Japanese New Year cards mentioned above, you'll recognize the photo.

Instead of the usual “good morning” from Fumie the other day, I got “oh, stinky!” I thought I could generally tell when my breath was less than the proverbial bouquet of roses, so I was somewhat surprised.

I breathed into a cupped hand and smelled, and noticed nothing untoward. She suggested that I wipe my finger on the back of my tongue and give that a whiff. It sounded slightly odd, but I gave it a try, and wow, talk about putrid! I hadn't been expecting any result, much less that result. I almost vomited.

A toothbrush on the tongue did little to assuage the situation (but did almost cause me to gag a few times), but using some toothpaste on my finger and scrubbing the back of the tongue took care of everything. Things have remained fine since.

Anyway, I'm sure that this is all more than you wanted to hear, but anyway, it's an effective technique that I thought I'd share. You learn something new every day!

Santa brought Anthony a new truck, and even after he'd played with it for several hours, I was awe struck by the concentration he showed, paying rapt attention to every detail.

Unlike most of the 15,000 photos I have of him (would you like to see them all? 🙂, these actually reflect the real Anthony that we see every day in person.

I'm totally enthralled with this whole series of a dozen or so shots, which I took at the kitchen table while he played.

 

 

 

(Daddy side comment: I remember when I could focus at things 1/2 inch from my cornea.... okay, no, I can't remember that far back)

(The whole series is here.)

We seem to have started a new family Christmas Eve tradition.....

First, we enjoyed the free mini concert that the Kyoto Hotel Okura puts on in their nicely-decorated lobby each Christmas Eve. We enjoyed it last year as well, when they had a men's choir. This year they featured the Tokyo Horn Spieler horn quintette.

They started out with a huge alphorn (looks like a 20-foot-long tobacco pipe originally used to communicate long distances in the Alps), then moved on to a pair of natural horns (like French Horns, without keys or valves -- basically, just an alphorn all wound up). Finally, they moved on to the main bulk of the thirty-minute concert with three French Horns and an alto tuba.

They played a lot of standard Christmas favorites, and some horn-friendly excerpts from some Classical music. We all enjoyed it, and Anthony even clapped of his own volition. He was a good, well-behaved boy (about which Mommy and Daddy were very happy, after having been a bit worried about how it would turn out).

Before leaving, we took a close-up look at the hotel's outside light display (which we've seen many times driving by, and which we saw last year as well). It's quite nice and ピカピカ (“pika-pika”, sparkling/twinkling).

Also before leaving, we picked up an order from one of the hotel restaurant that Fumie had phoned in earlier: a Christmas Eve chicken diner.

This is the chicken!

I guess that chicken is to a Japanese Christmas Eve somewhat what turkey is to an American Thanksgiving. I've always known that it's popular for couples to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken (yes, there are KFCs all over Japan) on Christmas Eve, but I'd not known that it was deeper than that. (I'd always thought that the KFC thing was sort of like a KFC/Japanese version of an American florist pushing “Secretary's Day”). But Fumie, for example, has strong memories of Mom's Christmas Eve chicken dinner, and wanted to try the same type of thing here (but having Hotel Okura cook it instead of Mom).

So, we brought home a cooked whole chicken, potatoes au gratin, and two jelled loaf-related things of indeterminable content. The chicken was very nicely spiced and, well, just perfect, as were the potatoes. The other things were also good, but I don't know what they were.

We got home and Fumie got everything set up, and we had a dinner that capped off an evening that I'm sure will be a tradition for years to come.

Ready to eat!