Culture Group and our Christmas card photo

I have been fortunate to join a spouses' group here, and one of the things you can do is join a Culture Group, where you interact with several local Japanese ladies. Above is the Christmas party that we had for them. It was fun to see their reaction to the traditional Christmas meal of ham/turkey, stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, and cranberry sauce. Some of the members have had it before, but the new members were very curious as to what everything was. Now trying to communicate what everything was, especially stuffing, a bit tricky. Luckily, several members of my group speak English relatively well! And, they ate a lot more than I expected! I also thought it was amusing to see that I was taller than most of the Japanese women there!

I look forward to January's culture exchange. All the groups will be meeting together to celebrate the new year at a Japanese restaurant. New Year's is a huge holiday here in Japan. Most everything closes down for a few days as the Japanese ring in the new year. I'm also looking forward to the sake factory tour that my group is planning for us!

So, after many previous attempts at taking a family photo for the Christmas card, we gave up on the idea. We decided to put the kids in kimonos, and I'm hoping we put them in the kimonos correctly, though the kids just wore their regular clothes under them! Tim's was way too big, as we couldn't find his size and wasn't sure where else to go to find more. I'll have to ask one of the Japanese ladies to take me to a store.

Our Christmas photo...taken in our "backyard"

By then, the boys had had enough and their friend had arrived to play the Wii with them. Kira, on the other hand, decided she wanted more photos taken. And, since I didn't get her 3 year photos taken, I decided to continue shooting some more photos.

She had a blast wearing that kimono! I love her in pigtails, but she just won't sit still for them, or if I can get her to have pigtails, they don't last long! She usually pulls out 1 pigtail and leaves the other within the hour! Oh well, I guess I'm just gonna have to keep trying!