My last day of work!!

Happy Festivus...er, New Year!!!

Yep, so today was my last day of work in the year of 2006 - it's been a fun year for sure! I get the 29th ~ 3rd off for New Year's since everyone here goes home and visits with family out here this time of year. Except for me, and a handful of other people I've come across in the past few weeks. So then what are my plans you ask? Well, I was graciously invited to spend New Year's Eve with the family of this lady that hosts a cooking show on a local cable station that I appeared on (don't worry, I'll have a copy of the broadcast as soon as it's done airing), so I'll be doing the whole traditional Japanese thing like I wanted to. For the uninitiated, this involves watching this cheesy karaoke-like show called "kohaku" while playing games with the adopted fam, then eating what's called toshikoshi soba (buckwheat noodles). There's also a special kind of rice wine that's served and some other weird stuff from what I hear. Anyway, then they go out to do a shrine (or temple) visit. This whole series of events is actually spread over a couple days usually.

So yeah, that's New Year's for me. If you're wondering how Christmas went this year, well not too bad actually. I had to work the entire weekend leading up to it because I played MC Santa at work at this "Santa Cafe"/music event, which actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. After that finished on Christmas Eve I went and did some capoeira, then on Christmas day I went out with a couple friends for some drinks and stuff - yes, karaoke was involved. All in all, better than it was in Chiba a few years back. If you check out my pictures I've uploaded a bunch of the event.

I have plenty of stuff planned over the next couple weeks to keep me busy... snowboarding, New Year's-ing, traveling, etc. So yeah, enjoy New Year's, whatever you do, and I'll see you on the other side in '07.