Happy New Year!

Resolution #1- Keep my apartment clean (read: no clean laundry on the floor!) for more than 3 days at a time.

Resolution #2- Pretend to study Japanese more often.

Resolution #3- Avoid 6-week long lags in blog posting... sorry!!

...in the name of making Resolution #3 a reality, I'll happily take my first morning back at work to give an update. However, since a million things have happened since my last post, I'm going to follow a 'random highlights with much less information and fewer photographs than usual'-format... if you want more information about something, you'll have to stop being a silent partner in this blogging relationship and COMMENT!! (feedback makes me happy and validates the hours of my life that it takes to post frequently and upload pictures)

Thanksgiving Dinner
Like last year, the Gunma JETs threw a Thanksgiving dinner in the prefectural capital, Maebashi. Turkey is a rare commodity in Japan, so for most of us, this dinner is the only time that we eat turkey during our year-long stay as an ALT.... yummm.


Hiroshima
We had a long weekend after Thanksgiving, so I stretched it out a little bit and took a trip to Hiroshima. It was rainy on the afternoon that we arrived, but I'd caught a stomach flu from one of my precious elementary schoolers, so I didn't mind the lazy pace that resulted from the weather. Our hotel was barely a block away from the Atomic Dome and Peace Museum, and the neighborhood had a ton of shopping areas preparing for Christmas... perfect rainy-day locations!
On Friday, we caught the trolley down to Miyajima, a small island off Hiroshima city, to check out the floating torii (shrine gate), several famous temples and shrines, the giant wooden rice scoop and an unbelievable number of wild deer (and monkeys!) wandering the island. The weather was beautiful and we were there at the perfect time of year to enjoy the blaze of fall colors, especially in Miyajima's famous maple tree parks.


GAJET Christmas Enkai
An enkai is a party, featuring a huge meal and all-you-can-drink, usually thrown by co-workers or teammates to celebrate the start/end of the year, the season, the semester, or any major event... basically, any excuse to throw a party. This year's Gunma JET enkai was held atop Mt. Haruna at a hot spring resort overlooking the lake. The location was beautiful, the company was great, and perhaps best of all, I received this excellent Pokemon hat as my Secret Santa gift:


Trip to America!
For the first time since I left for Japan in July 2005, I went home to visit family and friends. While I certainly can't complain about last Christmas on the beach in Thailand, there's definitely something to be said for waking up and opening presents with your family on Christmas morning (not to mention all of the festive holiday food that said family will prepare when they haven't seen you in 18 months!!) I ran around for over 2 weeks trying to see as many people, eat as much delicious food and do as many home-related-things as I could possibly do, but inevitably felt that my trip was too short. Several pounds and many hours of shopping later, I find myself back in Japan, freezing to death in my apartment and wishing that Gunma was experiencing a freakish New York-style heat wave.