Saturday:
I cannot describe the love I have for mornings that I don’t have to wake up and get out of my warm bed. I hate more than anything the cold. I enjoy staying snuggled under the covers as long as possible. On Saturday, I stayed there until about 10AM when I ventured to the kitchen for breakfast. I made pancakes while skyping back home. My mother was very surprised to see that I could see my breath in my kitchen. Yeah, it’s THAT cold here. Do you understand now why it’s so hard to get out of bed? 
It’s so cold that we have started leaving our facets dripping at night for fear of our pipes freezing. When we skyped David and Lucy, they joked that they were enjoying a nice centrally heated house. Not cool, guys. Not cool. How long is winter, and when exactly is the first day of spring??
Ian BBQ’d on Saturday, and we took the meat to a party on Saturday night at Brian’s house. Ian and I picked up Rachel on our way, but none of us were exactly sure where Brian’s house was, so we met Melissa and Asigiri and all piled into one car. We attempted very diligently to find his house, but we got lost….several times. Lol. In our defense, Brian’s house sits far back off any main roads. We thought we were going the right way one time, but the road led us down this one lane dark back road. Ian said, “I think this is right. Brian lives up the side of a mountain.” The three ladies in the car agreed that no it wasn’t right, and besides there are mountains ALL around. 
When we finally made it there, we had a good time. Brian had invited some of his neighbors over, and we introduced them to beer pong. I don’t drink, but it’s ALWAYS fun to watch Japanese people get drunk because they have such low alcohol tolerances. I don’t know how or why, but Ian always seems to be the life of the party, and the other Japanese guys just flock to him. They were doing goofy dances, arm wrestling, and just flat out being boys. The neighbors had also brought their kids….something that I found was a bit strange but whatever. While the adults played beer pong in the kitchen, the kids played juice pong in the bedroom. One of the kids had a little plastic samurai sword that lit up when he touched anything, so he went around smacking people with it. He hit one of the drunk Japanese guys right on the forehead, and I don’t think the guy even noticed. Ha! We didn’t stay very late because Justine was exhausted and wanted a ride home, so we all crammed into our tiny little car and went home.
Sunday:
Sunday morning we slept in. Mr. Ian had a bit of a rough night, so I left him alone for a little while and made breakfast. I made biscuits and gravy….except the gravy was too salty. That’s always disappointing. 
We were shocked whenever we heard a knock on the door around 11:30AM. I answered it, and it was a delivery guy. David and Lucy had sent us a Christmas package. Woo-hoo! We have AWESOME friends back home! I wanted to set it beside our tiny Christmas tree and open it on Christmas morning, but Ian refused. I told him I was going to hide it, but two things posed a problem with that: a) There are very few places in our house that I could hide it and he wouldn’t find it. He’s home all day every day, so he’d have PLENTY of time to look for it. I joked and told him that I’d hide it in the washing machine (since he NEVER washes clothes), and b) he tackled me to the ground before I could hide it. He said this was the first year that we didn’t really have to wait until Christmas to open Christmas presents, so (being the five-year-old he is ) he wanted to open it NOW. They mailed us a sweet card, cherry cordial M&Ms, candy canes, ordering information for Ian’s tux for their wedding, and the best of all was a pound of Reece’s. There are two half pound bricks of Reece’s. 
We both agreed that we could wait for Christmas to open that.
Sunday afternoon and evening I spent in the kitchen. I made a triple batch of sugar cookies to give to my co-workers on Monday. Since we have a tiny little oven, I could only make a few at a time, so it took several hours. I had a cookie cutter that my predecessor left behind, and I was looking forward to making gingerbread man shaped sugar cookies, but the dough just wasn’t right. It was too sticky to even think about rolling out. Melissa B. said that when she made cookies, the same thing happened to her. She wanted to roll out the dough and use cookie cutters, but it just didn’t work. Instead, I dropped them into little balls on the cookie sheet and baked them. They tasted great! They were a little cakey, but the taste was more than good. I had a couple of funny stories about baking. First, I tripped the breaker. Japanese houses aren’t wired like American houses. If we have several appliances on at once, there’s a chance all the power will go out. That happened. We had the heater, two lights, computer, and tiny oven on when the house went dark. It’s happened once or twice before, and it’s always a creepy feeling. Once Ian fixed it, we had to turn the light in our living room/bed room off for fear that it would trip the breaker again. Oh, Japan!
The second story was that it was so cold on Sunday night. Since I was out of our heated room, it was especially colder. While the oven was good for some heat, I still had to double layer socks and wear a hat and robe over my clothes just to be warm in the kitchen. Despite the fact that we sleep with our heater on, it’s still ridiculously cold. I went to bed that night with two layers of clothes, two robes, and two thick blankets on top of that. I was still cold. How long until spring?
Monday:
I took my cookies to school on Monday morning. I had one for breakfast and was unpleasantly surprised that somehow over night, they basically turned to cake. They still tasted good but were more cake than cookie. When I passed them out at school, everyone was really excited. I got several compliments, and one teacher even asked for the recipe. I also took cookies to the BOE after school. My supervisor had emailed me and asked me to come to the BOE after school, so I dropped off some cookies as well. The next morning when I went to the BOE, a couple of people told me how delicious they were. Yay for winning over my co-workers with American cookies!
We went to Hitoyoshi on Monday night to see Mary again. Before we went to the hospital, we met up with a few friends for dinner. I sent out a mass email to see if anyone was interested in going, and a few people responded. As we were driving through Taragi, we decided to swing by Rachel’s apartment to see if she wanted to go since she hadn’t responded yet. She did. We went to the same Indian restaurant that we always go to. It’s funny because since we go there so often, they basically don’t have to take our order, but they do just to keep appearances. 
Mary was able to start eating again on Monday, and Ian had promised to bring her a BBQ sandwich, but he forgot. Instead we took her some sugar cookies and honey candy that my parents had sent me for Christmas. When we pulled up in the parking lot, we noticed David’s motorcycle. Ian had the idea that we should move it, so whenever he leaves, he thinks someone stole it. As I’m writing this now, I realize how mean that seems, but it was meant to be a joke. We couldn’t do it because he had locked it, so our plan backfired regardless. Honestly, it’s a little strange to lock a vehicle here because it’s not like anyone is going to steal it……unless the people stealing it are foreigners. Melissa, Rachel, Ian, and I tucked our tails between our legs with great defeat and went up to Mary’s room. We told David our evil plan for his bike, and he laughed. We stayed for a long time talking and laughing. While the Japanese are very non-confrontational, they did politely kick us out. I guess we were being loud (which isn’t hard to believe since we’re Americans), so the patient in the room next to Mary’s started beating on the wall. David said all he heard was “_____ kudasi.” It was probably something like “Shut the heck up…please.” Ah, the Japanese are sooooooo polite!!
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