goodbye christmas

in some ways i am really happy to have christmas done with. it was harder than i thought to miss the holiday season. i am just happy for the little things that i did have here that made me feel better and amazing friends and family who sent me things in the mail and made it that much easier to handle.

the following pictures are from a kindergarten in the city i live in that is famous for it's lights. my coworker invited me to christmas dinner with his family and then we went and looked at lights. it was really nice and so kind of him to think to invite me.






and i celebrated christmas japanese style this year. it is pretty funny how the celebrate christmas here, commercially, but most people here don't know much about how christmas is celebrated in places like the states. here it is a really big date night and people get christmas cake (below) and a dinner of kfc...although i guess some americans probably do that too.
and andrea and joe came out and stayed with me on christmas eve since they had to be at the airport outside of tokyo to go make a flight the next morning. so we spent the evening celebrating all things american in this silly base town by going to tgi friday's. it is kinda expensive and really weird b/c the menus are all in english and everyone who works there speaks english. and there it is full of foreigners or girls who want to meet foreigners. so even though the atmosphere was weird, and, had i been home, i would have been getting home from church and hanging out with my family, it was nice to be able to eat the same food that i would have eaten if i was at home, and it was a good christmas eve spent with friends and a belly way too full of food.