Sugoi !!

Hey everyone...thanks for all of your responses on the Christmas tune(s) entry. We enjoyed reading all of them and with each comment I would say "Oh yeah...that is a goodie!" Lately the stores here have been pumping out Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas". That is definitely a catchy tune!

So the title of this entry is "sugoi". Some of you might know the meaning, but for those of you who don't -- it has several meanings i.e. - well done, super, great. Since I have been here I have come to the conclusion that it is used just like we say "cool" OR "awesome". Needless to say we have been hearing it a lot at this time of year and have caught ourselves saying it! :)

Jame just left for work. We both normally have today off, but he did a shift swap with a co-worker who went home for the holidays. I'm just chilling out to some holiday tunes. Thanks to Alex for the email letting us know about http://www.1049clearfm.com/ . It's that time of year when they play Christmas music non-stop. It's a nice change from all of the music we already have downloaded.

Last night my friends Yumi, Miho & Kenji came to our neck of the woods to go look at the Christmas lights and go for dinner. Yumi and Miho are both from Nara and Kenji is from Kobe (both about 1 hour away by train). We wanted to make sure we all saw each other before the year finished, so last night was the night.

They hadn't been to Tempozan Village in a couple of years, so we went to look at the lights in the pouring rain! They say that it doesn't really rain too much here in winter, but the last few days have been pouring! It felt just like home! Ha ha ha ! After checking out the lights we went to a delicious Chinese restaurant down the street and then we came back to our place for some drinks.

It was nice to hang out and talk about the differences between Japan and North America at this time of the year. They were really interested in the concept of Christmas and it was fun to share our family traditional stories of what we do on the 24th & 25th.

Alright....today the sun is shining and the sky is blue. I am going to head outside.....Awwww...just as I am signing off one of my favourite Christmas songs started playing, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan...sooooooo good!! SUGOI!!!