I love my friends!! Tonight was the Christmas party. We had a Christmas party done Japanese style with Christmas cake. "It's a Wonderful Life" was all rented out, so we watched a great movie called "Kamome Shokudou" about a Japanese lady who moves to Finland to start a cafe. It was such a good movie with great colors and characters. If anyone likes Amelie, I recommend that they find this movie and watch it. There are English subtitles. It probably has a different English name, too.
Tons of cake!! Ha. I don't even really like cake. But it was good. It looks like we have so many presents. I bought them soaps from Lush and they bought me sweets. In Japan, the one really wasteful thing is that people use too much packaging and wrapping paper. Merry Xmas!!

Last night, I realized that I have only one English-speaking foreign friend in Japan. All of my friends are Japanese except for a few Chinese friends who I speak Japanese with. Only two of my Japanese friends speak English well enough to communicate in English. I love my friends here and I have had some surprisingly deep conversations (passing the electronic dictionary back and forth) and made some interesting memories.

I have deliberately avoided making foreign friends because I really want to improve my Japanese. But now that I have some great friends and feel that my Japanese is improving, I’d like more friends who can speak my languages.

ThThe thing is that Japanese people hang out in groups. If you go somewhere alone, you will not meet people. If you go out in a group (even a two-person group) you will meet other groups and people will talk to you and you’ll make friends. Alone, though, you’re a bit hopeless. I have great friends here, but none of them really like to go out. Either they’re very busy or they’re not spontaneous (you often have to plan two weeks in advance just to go out for coffee with most Japanese people – that slight inflexibility is one of the most difficult things about having friends here) or they’re just quiet people who are awesome to talk to but aren’t too social.

I’m happy, but there’s just something about having a well-traveled friend who speaks a language in which you’re completely fluent. Meeting Thuy was still the best thing that has happened to me in Japan yet. I want to meet English and French speakers. I feel like my Japanese is getting to a level where speaking English occasionally won’t hurt me too much. I want English or French speaking friends in Kansai. I think I am a decent friend and my friends have a variety of interests. If you live in Kansai, leave a message and I’ll add you on Facebook.

Or... please tell me how you have made friends in Japan.

Atsushi wanted to know more about Christmas in foreign countries and when I told him that my family and I has often done volunteer work around Christmastime, he got really excited. He's from Shinjuku so he wanted to do something to help the homeless people living in the underground malls and parks. I told him to make a list of ideas about what he could do. In the end, we decided to make presents. We went to Donkey (a huge, cheap shop that sells absolutely everything...like a 100Y shop, but weirder) and bought all sorts of things that he thought homeless people might want. Warm socks and heat packs, candy and chips, wet wipes and juice. Atsushi bought it all and I helped him put all of the presents into neat little sacks.Then, he went around Shinjuku looking for people to give the presents to. The elderly lady in the picture above looked so happy and kept repeating, "Thank you! Oh, Thank you so much" again and again. Atsushi was pretty nervous at first, but soon he started to feel really confident. It's always nice to do kind things for others, especially when it's really cold outside.

Why is it that every Japanese person's favorite xmas song is either "Last Christmas" by Wham or "All I want for xmas is you" by Mariah Carey. Why.
WHY

Can you guys think of some things that your students or friends didn't know about foreign celebrities? Here are two things that have amazed most people to whom I've mentioned them.

1. Full House Michelle is actually twins. Really pretty, famous, rich twins that are on the cover of a Japanese magazine you have in your home right now.

For some reason, Full House is still really big here in Japan. The Full House DVD boxed set was one of the bestselling DVDs in Japan this year. Japanese people really can't get enough of a few American dramas. From what I notice people talking about, the most popular American dramas in Japan are probably Prison Break, 24, Lost and Full House.

I have a bunch of students who, when you ask them to write about their favorite movies or TV shows, always write about Full House. I thought, since it's their favorite program, that they'd know some basic background information about the show. For instance, the fact that Baby Michelle is actually played by twins. That's pretty basic, but most teenagers who like the show in Japan don't usually know it. That's why telling them will blow their minds. Especially when you show them a picture of Mary-Kate an Ashley Olsen and tell them that Baby Michelle isn't only twins, but she's those twins, who most people don't know the names of but can easily recognize because they are famous on Japanese magazine covers.Here's Full House dubbed in Japanese. For some reason, everyone is easy to understand except Uncle Jesse. I think they have him speaking in fast, Japanese slang and I have no clue what he's talking about.

2. Keanu Reeves is part Asian.
Most people are not overly surprised back home when they hear that Keanu Reeves is part Asian. The general response is a disinterested, "Oh, really?" because if you look at him, it's not surprising. But The Matrix is really big over here in Japan and Keanu Reeves is really popular and very cool. Teenagers are usually shocked and then get really, really happy. When I told some students about how Keanu Reeves is part Chinese-American, they actually looked a little bit jealous of my Chinese students, who looked very proud. Relax, guys. He's not actually The One. Keanu Reeves didn't save the world; his character Neo did that in a popular movie. In real life, Keanu Reeves is just a one-dimensional, kind of frozen-faced actor who is sometimes handsome and was in an awesome movie called Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Relax.