Ian Lewis' Blog

A bit late but... Happy New Year!

Reiko and I celebrated a long X-mas weekend with a party at her parents house on Saturday, opening gifts at my place on Sunday, and going to the Christmas Eve service at her church and eating dinner with her family on Monday. The party on the Saturday the 22nd was fun. Reiko's aunt and uncle, cousin's family, and brother's family complimented Reiko, her parents and I. Her cousin Keigo had big news. We found out that her cousin passed the policeman's exam and will become a police officer. Also, he and his girlfriend have decided to get married. She has two sons from a previous marriage so she and her sons came as well and we got the chance to meet them.

Sunday Reiko came over to my place and we had a stereotypical Japanese X-mas dinner. Fried chicken and various side dishes like potato salad. KFC is very popular for X-mas, much to my bewilderment. After dinner we opened gifts. I got Reiko a calendar, a bag, a DS game, and a wireless mouse. She got me a scheduler, a DS game, some picture frames, and a clock.

On Monday we went to the X-mas Eve service at Reiko's church. That was good because we got to see her older brother Akira who wasn't able to come to the party on the previous Saturday. After the service we went to the same local Chinese restaraunt we went to last year. It's become sort of a tradition I guess.

New Years break started the following Friday (Dec. 28) and ended this past Sunday (Jan. 7). I spent the first day or two at home, and then headed over to Reiko's house on Monday the 31st. At midnight we went to the local shrine like we did last year. But this year we went a bit later so it wasn't as crowded and we got to ring the big bell.

I stayed at Reiko's house for the next couple of days and we had a new years party. Reiko's uncle made some Tai curry and plum wine, of both of which I am a big fan so he brought those by. After the new years party I stayed around and helped Reiko finish her paper for her Child Psychology class. She has problems sometimes with proper grammer and such when writing papers. But she did really well and I'm really proud of her.

After that I spend the rest of the vacation at home. Reiko came by on Friday and we watched a couple of movies and had dinner before she headed back to her house. So far the new years is starting out well. I have a couple friends coming to Tokyo the first month, so I can visit with them. I have potential prospects for a new job, and though nothing's concretely planned yet, I'm currently planning to make a trip back to the 'States around golden week so I'm looking forward to that.

This year I hope to find time, motivation, and energy to work more on open source software and improve my Japanese even further. I also feel some pressure to improve my skill set and advance my career so I hope to make advances in that area this year.

Hope everyone is having as good a beginning to the year as I am! Happy New Year!