I didn’t go out yesterday, which meant that it was raining today.

Luckily, around lunchtime the rain stopped and my youngest and I were able to escape.

My first mission involved 1) go to atm and get money; 2) cross street to different atm and deposit money: 3) find a place to eat lunch.

Step one went badly as the atm I was using wouldn’t let me withdraw money. Instead I had to get back in line and get a different atm. Once the money was secured, I headed over to a different bank and deposited the money. Once the money was deposited our youngest and I went to a fast food place for lunch.

After that my job was to stay out of the way of last minute packing. I also had to refrain from comments and suggestions.

Eventually, She Who Must Be Obeyed and our youngest made their way to the other side of the island. Now it’s my job to think about packing. Eventually.

Our Christmas dinner morphs a bit from year to year, but this year established the basics: Chicken, potato salad, bread, cheese, wine.

Because turkey is both difficult (and expensive) to acquire and nearly impossible to cook (unless the bird is the size of a pigeon) we end up with whole chicken leg (defined as “roast” chicken, but it usually ends up as teriyaki chicken.) This is easier to cook but lacks what I consider a vital element: the ability to use leftovers for sandwiches. There’s also no stuffing and very little pie.

Because everyone was busy, more or less, an odd side effect was that the sweets remain unfinished. This means dessert will be tomorrow.

Knowing the way we do things, that might end up being supper.

Over the years I’ve come to accept that Christmas is just another random festival here in Japan. As such, especially as the girls have gotten older, our actual Christmas is fairly modest.

This year our oldest has plans that will keep her busy most of the day and our youngest has plans that involves cupcakes and will keep her away part of the afternoon. I have work to do but I’ll be able to do it at home and She Who Must Be Obeyed and I might sneak out for cheap sushi.

The advantage of Christmas being just another random festival is that restaurants don’t fill up. It’s just an ordinary day.

We usually make the New Year’s holiday our big celebration. This year even that will be slightly complicated, but more on that in a future post.

Until then, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to everyone!

I don’t like it. She either didn’t remember or did it on purpose. Either way I ate it and didn’t say anything.

There are only two foods in Japan, arguably in the world, I don’t like: Sweet omelets which are an everyday abomination served along side sushi, and Oshiruko, a kind of soup made from sweetened red beans and rice cakes. Oshiruko is a Japanese new year’s tradition but it reminds me of manju that’s been eaten and then puked up. (Note: I’m not sure why I don’t like it, but I think it’s because, at first glance, it looks like baked beans. It is not baked beans, though, and I guess my brain can’t handle that.) I’m also not a huge fan of mochi, the rice cakes served in the manju vomit. These are rectangular bits of chewy rice paste that Japanese consider to be a form of food.

Tonight, for reasons I don’t understand, She Who Must Be Obeyed served oshiruko  and mochi for supper. This wouldn’t bother me except it was the main dish. The side dish was a vegetable and sausage stir fry. This left me with a dilemma: do I order pizza and risk the wrath of SWMBO or do I eat it and say it was delicious and then cook something else.

I opted for the latter, sort of, as that is my husbandly duty (In sickness and in health; for better and for crappy food. It’s there; look it up.) I didn’t cook, but I did supplement with some cheese and a banana.

That got some attention, though, which may or may not be a good thing.

Our oldest, being finished with exams (sort of, maybe, long story), went to an event honoring the release of one of her favorite singer’s new singles. While she was there she managed to anger She Who Must Be Obeyed. I, of course, didn’t make things better, but it did get me thinking.

First, our oldest changed clothes and went to the concert but left the parts of her school uniform scattered around the living room. In fact, it was so messy that it’s fair to say that even Project Blue Book would have sent agents to investigate her alien abduction.

While she was away, she texted to inform us that she had lost her Kanji textbook, which meant she couldn’t study for an exam she has tomorrow. She didn’t know where she’d lost it but had a couple possible locations.

(Note: If I’d known she had an exam tomorrow she wouldn’t have gone. That said, I do not understand why both she and She Who Must Be Obeyed refer to the exam as a “mini-exam” that seems both important and not important.)

The revelation of the lost book led to much anger/ranting from SWMBO, whose anger is a lot like a string of firecrackers: once it starts it doesn’t stop until it’s finished and trying to stop it frequently leads to injury.  I contributed by commenting that there was little we could do about it at that moment as we were in a different state and that we should save our anger until our oldest arrived home/I finished what I was working on. (Note: this, as near as I can tell, did not endear me to SWMBO.)

I met our oldest at the station to escort her home as she arrived well after dark (and there’s a creepy guy along the way who’s spoken to her in the past…another long story), she explained that her book had been buried in her backpack the entire time.

This made me mad as it proved she hadn’t actually studied, which is why the book was buried where she couldn’t find it. But then it got me thinking.

Our oldest had clearly had a Teenage Moment. This is like a Senior Moment, but happens to teenagers.

I shudder to think how many Teenage Moments I had when I was a teenager. Then again, it’s fair to say that everything that happened to me from age 12 to age 33 counted as a teenage moment.