Christmas Day 2014

Spending Christmas away from home feels strange. 2014 was my second time to do it, and this time I had to work on Christmas Day! I'm not really sure why because there was nothing there for me to do, but Christmas isn't really a holiday in Japan. It's more just for couples. I put chocolates on everyone's desks in the staff room at work and asked to use a bit of my paid leave for the afternoon.

In the evening I went round to Anita's house with Ana, where we were going to have some traditional Japanese Christmas food - KFC and cake! Every year in December people reserve their Christmas box of KFC chicken, and then queue up to pick it up at Christmas. Apparently, (according to Wikipedia) this started in 1974 when KFC started promoting their Christmas Party Bucket.

Me and Anita went to pick up our box at the nearby KFC. We also got beer, mikan (satsumas, because winter), After Eights (because I missed Christmas at home), and Ferrero Rocher (because I had some left over from giving them out at school).

We also picked up a Japanese Christmas cake, which is much better than our fruity British Christmas cake. Normally Japanese Christmas cake is sponge cake with cream and strawberries on, but we went for a chocolatey version.

So I spent my first Christmas in Sendai with these two :)