Winter Break

Free as of 4 PM yesterday, until the 12th of January. KILLER. Everyone in town except for me and a woman who works in Iwaizumi about an hour and a half north of here are back in their homelands, so looks like she and I are going to be doing whatever the hell it is we do in Miyako a lot for the next week.
I'm thinking of cooking dinner for Christmas, which'll be a bit of a challenge considering the space limitations (not to mention lack of cookware), but so far I'm considering the following:

- Poached cod or red snapper with a mildly spicy tomato reduction, topped with caramelized onions.
- Shredded mackeral & bean sprout "salad" topped with grated shiso & cucumber and a bit of chili oil
- Mashed potatoes with broccoli, garlic & red wine aus jous. MAYBE throw my favorite mushrooms in there, but I'm pretty sure those are going to be pretty difficult to locate up here.

She suggests we go to KFC. Even if I habitually ate meat other than fish, that sounds like a terrible idea.

But yeah, I think that Christmas'll be pretty rad up here - nice and quiet, spent with new friends in a new place. Its funny how into Christmas the Japanese are without having the basest understanding of what the holiday means. Not that I care for the underlying religious theme, but I at least know of it. The Japanese, on the other hand, just love any reason they can get their hands on to throw up stringed lights and blow-up dolls of American things.

Speaking of Christmas, for my senior class yesterday I taught them about "The War on Christmas." Reason for that being, I was teaching other classes about Christmas in general and wanted to recycle as much material as possible. Turned out to be a good class, though a bit difficult for the students (a surprise considering they've consistently surprised me with their rather high level of english comprehension).Basically, I used that idea to introduce the concept of free speech and had the students write their opinions on that topic. I tried to be as objective as possible, but its near impossible not to point out, at least subtly, the inherent moral flaws of our nation's "greatest" right-wing thinkers.

There are a lot of reasons I like living in Japan, but one of them definitely has to be that I don't have to deal with those jokers on a daily basis.

Other news: Considering going from beard to Allman-Brothers-meet-Lemmy from Motorhead.