Our family Christmas

It was quite fun to celebrate Christmas in a country for whom Christmas is more of a shopping opportunity than a cultural event. So we made our own Christmas traditions or should we just call them Christmas activities?

I worked right through to Christmas Eve so we enjoyed sharing the Christmas spirit around the school. We snuck a Christmas stocking to Kumiko, my program assistant in the office, who was thrilled that this was the first time Santa had ever found her.

Sarah and Alexis visited in the afternoon and we had a great time joining in on the different club activities that were happening that day.

Naginata.... they love getting their formal photos taken with us

Kudo; traditional Japanese archery- that target is a long way away; Sarah and Alexis were given chairs as beginners!  

Kendo- This is the Tokyo champion posing with for us. It is quite amazing to see the power of these polite and gentle girls whacking each other...

Luckily they have body armour.

After a lovely bike ride home in the sun we cleaned up hand headed next door for the Christmas party of the International Student Residence where students who couldn't afford to fly home were celebrating the season. 

Santa hats and Christmas carols were a must...

"Traditional" foods such as chicken and Coke...

Some Cambodian pop songs...

And finishing off the event with a Cambodian "traditional/pop" dance; check out Alexis and Sarah"s dance moves!

Then back to our apartment to our beautiful Christmas tree...yes, you see it all lit up in white, stockings and the Christmas Eve festivities. 

We read the Christmas story, the Night Before Christmas and listened to A Child"s Christmas in Wales, just like every year even though we are thousands of miles away in a different home. As Mom used to say, home is really where you hang your hat. 

On Christmas day we enjoyed small gifts and goodies but enjoyed the gift of having Sarah and Alexis with us as our main gift. 

We enjoyed having some friends over for Christmas dinner- Mattias of German origin who is an astronomer at the Tokyo Astronomy Institute and a Zen practitioner,

Paul, our resident Friend at Friends centre from Australia who is an interpreter in Tokyo. 

Dinner was eaten on our laps in our Spartan and cosy living room. 

And, as is usual in our lives, there was just one other event to catch that day. Our Jazz Choir had a year end Christmas party that night so we had a hilarious time of singing Western Christmas carols in Japanese with a few English phrases thrown in. Check out "Santa Claus is coming to town";

Sunday, our final event of the week was a lovely Christmas celebration at Meeting with many of the Friends School girls who have a lovely choir;

And we finished off the day with a performance of the Messiah put on by the Meiji University Music School along with our friend Sayako from Meeting who is the Foreign Affairs department expert on Mongolia...

And, on the bike ride home, a visit to the Harujuku neighbourhood of Tokyo with Sarah and Alexis to show them where the coolest dress-up stores are for "cosplay"... do you like our ear muffs?

So we entered our New Year"s holiday feeling blessed with the gifts of family, of new and old friends, of adventure and of exploration. We wish you all the same gifts in your lives, in your nook of the world and in your family. Happy New Year to all of you!