メリークリスマス

Merry Christmas!! メリークリスマス!! Actually, there is no Japanese word for Merry Christmas so that is the English expression written out in katakana. Katakana is one of the 3 written scripts of the Japanese language.  

This past week leading up to Christmas has been something of whirlwind. I've had an awesome time reconnecting with my friends that made it to the island before me. On Saturday, our friends, Tim and Megan, introduced us to a house cafe. I didn't take any pics because I'm not sure what the etiquette is concerning that. A house cafe is at someone's home. They make the food right in their kitchen and we ate in their dining room basically. My understanding is that some are more set up than others. At the one we went to, there were about 3 tables set up in the living room/dining area next to the kitchen. We had some options printed out on a menu and the Japanese lady pointed out the food on the menu that they were not offering that night. 

Omg. The food. So incredible. We get several different appetizers to split and each was amazing. We even ate whole shrimp (head, eyes, and body), and it was amazing. I have no idea how but even with the shell it was perfectly soft and delicious. Our meals were awesome wasabi pork and beef. It was probably some of the best food I have had in my life.

It turned out that Christmas was upon us this week. Crazy.We found a 7.5 foot fake Christmas tree on sale and it has has made the house feel so much more Christmasy.

I'm probably going to keep this tree up till mid January, just so it can feel like Christmas just a little longer.

Since I just got here 2 weeks ago, I haven't completely adjusted to the time of the year. Its been a nice week and it feels more like fall/summer than winter. In fact, we are enjoying our little convertible and the warm allows us to keep the top down.

Kit loves riding around with the top down! 

Christmas Eve was awesome. My friend, Megan and I (mostly Megan) made all these incredible foods. I went shopping at the Japanese grocery store to try to find all our ingredients. It was quite and adventure and took about forever to try to figure out what items were. I probably would have never been able to complete task if I didn't have Rob with me who was a huge help with his limited Japanese. I love shopping there. I feel like the vegetables, meat and fish are far more fresh than the commissary on base that is probably importing all our foods from the US. The fish selection is, of course, amazing here. There are so many varieties of fish and all look so good and fresh! I have no clue what 75% of it is, but i'm sure it is all delicious. One of my favorite parts of the store is that they have sushi and food fried with tempura that you can buy to take home and eat for dinner. Its like in the States how we have those counters where you can get chicken, potato salad, and whatnot for a quick dinner to take home. Its soooo good and fairly inexpensive too! It took about 2 hours, but I was able to dig up most of the ingredients we needed for our Christmas Eve party.

                        My favorite dish was kimbap, which is Korean dish very similar to sushi. 

Christmas day was fun but also little strange for me. It didn't really feel like Christmas without family. My gift for Rob is still traveling the oceans coming here so the gift part of the day was a little short. I got to Skype with my family back home (it was Christmas Eve for them) and it was so fun to chat for a little while. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner with a bunch of other Marines and their families that night. It was so great to celebrate with our new Okinawa friends. We ended the night falling asleep watching Elf. Pretty great Christmas overall!

PS. Sorry boys, no dragon in this post. You guys need to find me a dragon that I can write about