In Japan, putting off your Christmas shopping until the last minute isn’t that big of a deal unless you want something popular or you want chicken. Then things get kind of complicated.

Our youngest chose a game for her 3DS and, since I was already most of the way to Tokyo, I decided to head to one of my favorite stores and see if they had the game. They didn’t and neither did another store so we had to order it on-line. The problem was the deliver was guaranteed “from the 25th to the 29th” because, apparently, the store selling the game learned customer service from a phone company and/or large cable company.

The item is currently “on its way” but won’t arrive for Christmas morning. Instead our youngest will get an IOU.

Our oldest is on the naughty list. Long story.

While I was out doing our last minute Christmas shopping (which technically, is our actual Christmas shopping) I stopped by KFC to get fried fish. (Yes, really.)

The small restaurant had been cut in half with a few seats available for customers and the rest taken up by a table full of cooked chicken. One Christmas tradition a lot of Japanese families have is they order some sort of chicken for Christmas lunch or dinner. KFC provides the pieces for entire banquet, but they have to be ordered well in advance and the slots to get them tend to fill up fast. (That’s a long story involving calendars and red markers.)

Apparently I walked into pick up time, although no one actually picked up an order when I was there which made what happened next especially annoying.

While I was in line, the few remaining seats filled up with the bags and jackets of the people behind me in line. I was left standing and glaring at a woman who’d clearly finished a long time before but was engrossed in her smart phone and her selfishness.

I, of course, responded with a calm, quite and Christmassy “F@#k you. And f@#k you. And f@#k you.” before being directed to a seat that was little more than a stool on the far side of the line of people who just taken all the seats.

I calmed down and enjoyed my lunch and resisted the urge to leave my trash for someone else to clean up. Instead, I disposed of everything properly.

I do, however, kind of wish I tried to buy a chicken.  (More on that in another post.)