Christmas with Sacchan! - December 25th

Having spent the previous day lazing about the house and enjoying a delicious Christmas Eve meal with Hans and my host family, I was all rested up for my day out with Sacchan. Christmas in Japan is not a big holiday. In fact, it's not even a day off from work for most people. It's about on par with Valentines day, in the sense that it's just another excuse for couples to spend money on each other. Despite my bitterness at canned couples holidays, I was genuinely excited to spend time with Sacchan, who I'd only seen briefly in almost 4 months.

We hung around Shinjuku for a while, doing some random shopping (for each other) before going over to Ikebukuro to kill most of our Afternoon walking around Tokyu Hands and Sunshine City. We bought rings for each other at Marui, but apparently my fingers are huge, because it would take almost an entire month for them to get a ring my size. I guess they just hadn't mined enough silver ore to make it yet. We got lost in Sunshine City and by the time we had escaped, it was dark and there were some lovely blue christmas lights set up around the megamall. At that point I got a call from Hans and Reed, who were meeting up in Shinjuku with Katy and Tracey and her sister. They were hanging out at the Cosmic Center, so we had some time to kill before going out to meet them. So what better place than

The HUB!

We spent Happy Hour drinking their Christmas specials and randomly running into Bob, who was "giving a English lesson" to an older woman. On Christmas? Whatever you say. We caught the train to Shinjuku and had dinner at a chain restaurant before I had to see Sacchan off on the Odakyuu line. Afterwards, I met back up with Hans and we unsuccessfully searched for hydrogen peroxide at a pharmacy before walking back to Baba together. At that point, I figured that I had walked that far, I might as well just keep on going, so I walked all the way home from Shinjuku. Such a hike would probably have been daunting a year ago, but nowadays, I really don't mind walking around for an hour or two. Perhaps it was just because I was in such a good mood; the day couldn't have gone too much better!