Christmas in the Dorms

And they made me the tree...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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Word of the Post:
良いお年を (Yoi otoshi wo)- Have a good year~!
あけましておめでとうございます!　(akemashite omedetou gozaimasu)－ Happy New Year!

They are both said during the time of the New Years holiday.  The difference? The first is said before New Years, the second is said After the day.  So before we went on break, everyone I saw greeted me with a "良いお年を！"
Afterwords, ”あけましておめでとう～！”

The more you know. Hehe.

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On a quick side note:

Oh, so the newest Tales of game came out recently, right?  It's called Tales of Xillia (Tales of "ex"illia), and I bought it for a pretty good price (5000￥).  I can't play it right now, being in Japan without my PS3 or even a television, but when I can!  Oh man.



Anyways, I was really pissed off after purchasing this game, you wanna know why?  I bought it for, what I believe, is a pretty good price.  About two weeks later, I went back to the store and checked the game section, just for fun.  I found the game for 2000￥.  2000!  THAT'S MUCH CHEAPER!

So, yeah, I was really aggravated.  Makes me wonder, should I go and purchase all the Xillia games that I can find for that cheap, and sell them for a good profit when I get back to the states?

Okay, okay, back on track now.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

So...Christmas...

Being a single American in Japan for the year, Christmas obviously wasn't something that was largely special.  Ends up that Christmas is a time for couples to spend time together as opposed to it being a place for family gathering and present giving.

I found myself missing my family and the lively environment that I was used to during the Christmas holidays every year.  Of course, I also missed the presents, Haha but it wasn't really a big deal.

Anyways, this Christmas, we had a small party for the dorm, and another party for Rifa.  These events both happened before the actual Chrismas day because we have break during Christmas.

The first was the dorm party.  It took place in Reitaku's College cafeteria, Hiiragi.  On the second floor, to be exact.  And there were a lot less participants than I expected there to be.  We were separated into 5 or 6 different groups, each with 6 to 7 people.  I was in Group A with Sarah, Group B had Cho, Elise, and Gary.


Sarah, Name, and I were all in A.


B had Gary, Elise, and Cho.

We came kinda early....so we had plenty of time to fool around and take silly pictures.  Hahaha.


Come to Santa, Rudolph.


Closer.
Let me get onto your back!


Hahaha, I'm putting her reindeer head on...  Cho's the one who's snapping the pictures.  Riding Sarah, the Reindeer.


RyouCho Tomomi-san~!  She doesn't like having her picture taken, especially when it's just her alone.  I had to get a surprise shot, so it came out blurry.....  :(

Here's a much better shot of her.


Tomomi approves of this shot!

So the party officially commenced with a welcoming speech and then immediately jumped into the activites.  There were two:  Bingo for Prizes, and Cake Making -With a Catch-.  Both were really fun, and I would love to do them again in the future......one day.

The first activity was Bingo.  I think nearly every person got a prize, they had so many...The first prizes were the best.. there were two pillows available, pink and black.  I would have loved to get those, or the towels (a set of two)...I was way too late though, immediately after Sarah, in fact...  Cho got the towels.



Sarah and I got two cute stuffies:

Sarah got Donald.  I obviously got Goofy.


Gary got Pooh Bear, Winny the Pooh Bear~~


Elise got some rackets for Badminton...they don't look very strong though.....

After, we had a little cake making game..... It was really fun, though we didn't understand what we were doing at first.  It started with questions that, if answered correctly, wins ingredients for a team: things like pocky, candy, chips, fruit, corn....a lot of different things.

Sarah and I both managed to answer a question...  I got "What is the price of Curry in Hiiragi?" correctly.  Hahaha.  Not knowing what we were doing, I got the fruit cup and a candy cup.

One of the questions was "What is Mario's Occupation?"  Surprisingly, no one seemed to know that question.  Sarah and I knew immediately, and we both started to raise our hands, but.....we didn't know the word for plumber!  How lame is that?  So in the end, we didn't get that question correct...

After, we spent the time making cakes!  The catch of the cake making was that we had to use everything that we had obtained during the question game.  So, if we grabbed corn, kakimochi, cereal, etc. we had to find a way to incorporate that to our cakes.  After, we had to eat what we made, so obviously, we didn't want to make a bad cake.

They gave us the cake, strawberries, and some cream as a base.

This is Group A's cake process:

The base...there were two slabs of cake, the bottom layer and the top layer.

We started, of course, with the bottom layer:

Whew, look at all those tasty looking strawberries!

For this layer, we put cream in what would soon be the center piece, placed cocoa powder and chocolate cereal flakes in the center.

We then placed the top of the cake on, and layered that with cream as well.

After, we decorated the cake with cream swirls, and placed a strawberry on the inside, right next to each swirl.

We took the fruit, minus the (SURPRISE!) corn that was mixed in with the fruit (Seriously!? Corn!?), and placed it in the center between the strawberries and cream.

Then we lightly layered the sides with cream and stuck any snacks that seemed appropriate onto the side.

All the remaining ingredients were then filtered into the space between the cake and the plate, where we didn't have to eat them...

The end result came out to this gorgeous masterpiece, the cake of Group A!



It looks really good, doesn't it!  Well, as long as you ignore the random crap that's on the plate.....  It was the only way to use everything without ruining our cake!


Group A Cake Pose!

Other cakes were as follows:

Group B:



Group C:


Group D:


Group Cho(Leader, this is both the ryoucho(Tomomi-san) and the unicho-tachi (the people who control each individual unit):

What is this disaster?!  How are you gonna eat that...
Wait.....wait- wha-wha what are you doing?!


More!?  Well, try your best cho-tachi!

After we made our cakes, all that was left was devouring them..



Doesn't that look just delicious?  <3

After making the cakes, we had a few hours to sit around and talk.

During this time, I actually started an interesting game of my own.  It was a game where I tried to see how many people I could get to give me their name tags.  I got quite a bit.


It started with a few, Elise, Gary, Cho, and my own name tag.


It soon got very out of hand, and I got a lot of tags from everyone there.


They decided that I would make a good Christmas tree...


Oh, Rudolph, pose with your Santa.  Hahahaha.

We talked and wandered, and took pictures with friends.  I felt like a celebrity, except that I know they were taking pictures of me because I looked like an idiot.

After a few hours of talking, it was time to say goodnight for the night, and head on back to the dorm rooms...



We actually stood outside for a few hours and talked afterwords.  We didn't actually leave to our rooms 'till maybe 11PM.  And the party ended at 9.

I was, unsurprisingly, very tired for that night and as soon as I got to my room, I dropped off to sleep.

Next time, I'll upload the Christmas Party Viva la Rifa!

またね。。