And to all a good night...

I'm preemptively writing this Christmas post since I'm off to Osaka to take the GRE this weekend. In order to escape the thought of sitting alone in my apartment on Christmas Day, I've decided it would be in my best interest to go on a road trip across Japan until my disposable cash is depleted. Hopefully things don't end up as one of my colleagues has presaged:

"You're probably just gonna blow it all in one night cos you'll be too drunk to notice..."

In spite of what Mr. Spiller predicts, I will not appear back in Hagi on Monday morning with my tail between my legs. Instead of sitting in my lonely apartment on Christmas, I'll probably be sitting in a train amongst complete strangers on my way to Nagoya or Kyoto, which is considerably more preferable in my honest opinion.

How I will miss the 24-hour showing of The Christmas Story on TBS; how I'll kick myself because I was deprived of my ritual viewing of How the Grinch Stole Christmas; how I'll curse the hour when instead of eating Christmas ham and my sister's world famous deviled eggs, I'll most likely be eating sashimi with boiled rice and miso soup.

I'll miss many things, but I'll hopefully remain unaware of what day it is in the approaching week, and I'll wake up on the morning of the 26th and breathe a much needed sigh of relief. There'll be many Christmases in the future for me, and just one of them away from my family and friends while stuck in a country that actually works on that day does seem like blasphemy to most Western Christians, but I'll get by. Besides, I'm not even sure I would classify myself as a typical Western Christan anyway.

For those of you outside of my immediate family who actually take the time to read this blog, Merry Christmas to all...