Holidays!

Ahhh, holidays! Hooray! Yay!

Most people in Japan are on holidays now till the 4th or 5th of January. The new year holiday is the most important holiday in Japan. 'Ohshogatsu' is celebrated from January 1st to 3rd. People go back to their home cities to spend time with their families, visit temples, shrines and eat certain festive foods.

Then the big sales hit. *oh such glee!* Can't wait! I went into GAP again *tee hee hee* and the wool jackets I bought were now down to 2,900 yen!! Boy do they know how to have a sale. When they say sale, they really mean it! I respect that - a lot. I think there was a further 25% off everything including sale items. I'm so tempted to buy the down quilted coat - it's so cheap now! Anyway I picked up some warm tops for work, matching beanie and scarf, big warm jumper and some stuff for Brendon.

I finally got through my mountain of ironing and then met up with two teachers from school for dinner.

They wanted me to try real hardcore Japanese food. We were all really hungry and couldn't be bothered driving into the city for 'turtle soup' so we headed to this tasty sushi joint. The servings were huge and filling. The sashimi slices were fresh and super thick. We had 'nabe' (like steamboat/hotpot/shabu-shabu" with angler fish, tofu, veges and mushrooms, including the delicacy 'angler liver.' We also had this raw fish skin dish which you dunk the strips of skin into this bright yellow sour paste, uni (sea urchin) - it wasn't so much the taste but the texture that made this one hard to stomach, tempura - can't go wrong and ikura (salmon roe).

Afterwards we headed to Royal Host, this 'family restaurant' with a 'drink bar' - all you can drink teas, coffee, cappacino, softies and juice. I had this mega hot fudge sundae *simply divine* and just sat back, relaxed, chatted and re-filled until one of their students started her work shift and said 'hello' to us. We pretty much left straight after that and called it a night.