Happy New Year

The days between Boxing Day and New Years Eve merge into a slow, heavy treacle even with events and outings; it feels like everyone is tired, the nice kind of tired like a Saturday morning.

My wife and I went out with a friend for New Years Eve, it was his birthday too and plans had fallen through. I ended up running around the neighbourhood for a restaurant that was open. I found one, I opened the door and the manager/ owner/ head chef/ waiter was wearing a heavy coat and doing some inventory. I asked him if he’d be open at 19:00 and he said sure. In the intervening time he turned the heating on, dragged out a table and put on some background music for us. While we ate, he took his time cooking, didn’t rush us out the door and we had a great time. A lot of foreigners are used to places being open on New Years Eve and New Years Day, but that isn’t really the case in Japan. We were lucky to find one tiny restaurant with one man in the kitchen open.

Part of that is because everything is open on Christmas here. It’s not a big deal in Japan and I quite like that I can do all my Christmas dinner shopping on Christmas Day. It somehow feels less stressful than doing it the night before and having it all prepped would be.

New Year's Day however, almost everything was shut. A few supermarkets and toy shops remained open, but largely it was quiet, with everyone embracing the aimless peace for at least a few more days.

I bought New Years’ cards to send back to my family. Christmas cards, and even regular postcards! are almost impossible to find so I always grab a dew to send to family and friends back in the UK and the states (well mostly the UK now, postage, tariffs, you know the drill).

It’s odd because it’s just about the only Japanese new years’ ritual I do after living here for almost four years. I don’t go to shrines, I don’t eat oden and I always tell myself that I’ll do it next year, but this might be the last chance I get.

Because we’re leaving Japan in March of 2027.

I’d hoped I would blog or diary about my time here more but life just … happened. I didn’t have the chance to sit down and write. It’s only when we reach an end of something we realise we should have been saving it for posterity. So, once again, I will try my best to archive everything here. I’m not expecting it to take too long.

My main priorities in the first few days are prepping for going back to work on Tuesday, doing some cleaning/ tidying and painting up twenty 28mm samurai as late Christmas presents/ mementos. Late in the year I’ll need to deal with microchipping a cat, selling furniture, closing bank accounts and booking flights. I’m already stressed about it and it’s only January!

Hopefully, as with my previous time here life will just happen. I will still have time to cook, to watch movies, to go on dates with my wife and to enjoy my time here. Even if I don’t blog about it.

I went out with some friends on Saturday evening. We talked about video games, D&D and comic books, we talked about families, work and life in Japan. We ate, we drank and the vast amount of stuff that I need to do in the next 15 months seemed far less scary.