Christmas in Japan sucks.. BUT!

Christmas in Japan, when you are from the UK, sucks. BUT friends that can make amazing Christmas dinners are the best Christmas present ever. Love my friends.

Christmas is not a holiday here. It’s actually the day where Japanese people go out with their boyfriend or girlfriend and exchange gifts. Nothing about family or Santa. Just a huge couples day. People without partners can get very very sad on Christmas Day. Which I think is a bit sad 😦 it should be for everyone. (Well that wants it!)

This week I’ve worked 70 or so hours. In not getting home this Christmas. But I did get invited to mrs Tanakas for Christmas dinner. It was fantastic.

Thankful for food import services. I managed to have turkey for the first time in years. Cranberry sauce. Sausages, stuffing. I’m in heaven. So unbelievably happy.

Best Christmas in years. So grateful. I hope everyone has a merry Christmas! I’m hoping this year I can make it he in time from work. People here work too much!

Deadlines

It’s that time of year again. That time of year when work gets so busy I forget it’s Christmas. That coming home from work on the train before the last train feels like it’s early.

Deadlines…

Or rather in this case, I just started work on a project that’s due in two weeks but realistically would take two months. Welcome to push the limits time.

I’m well and truly used to deadlines, but the end of year project had my workmates and I working three days straight with no sleep and no bathing either. The smell was so bad..

So recently to cheer myself as I go home. I’ve been taking strange selfies. I dubbed it strange selfies, as well, they aren’t the normal selfies. I’m not much a fan of selfies anyway but I thought I’d do my take on them.

Usually on my way home I try to take strange pictures that would have a lot of people looking at me like I was an idiot. It’s rather fun actually. Everyone is stuck in their phones that they don’t notice what’s going on around them. Not sure how I feel about it. I’m also part of it.

Here’s two of them so far. Thank you apple for the timer update on the camera!

This was a busy train.. No one noticed..

A busy train platform.. Again no one noticed.

And my take on Beyoncé.

I woke up like this

Two weeks to go, two very hard weeks ahead. This year I challenged myself to learn motion graphics. Let’s see how far I can go with it in two weeks!

Japanese character food!

Japan has so many tv shows, games, card games, animations, characters for almost everything. There’s even characters for cities and towns..

I like my characters a lot, but even I can’t keep up with them. However luckily my husband picks up on the things I miss.

Recently his obsession is Yokai Watch. A TV show like Pokemon with characters that go around discovering spirits in the world using a special watch. It is super popular with the kids and even a lot of adults.

Jibaniya is currently my husbands favourite character. It’s a cute ish rude kind of character.

He even managed to get furikake, a Japanese rice topping with the character on it…

So cute..

Each packet has a character on it. With different flavours. Tastes pretty amazing.

A new Pokemon for the next generation it seems. I prefer Pokemon however.. The theme tune to the TV show annoys me so much.

In Japan, not even rice toppings are safe from being covered in characters and sold to the masses.

Company leaflet

A few years ago I had the fun project of creating our works company leaflet. Seeing as we are a design company who focuses on being a little bit different and going beyond satisfying our customers needs and expectations. This was fun!!

We have so many work events, Japanese events and before/after makeovers and our end of year project that there was so much material to choose from.

The inside shows our events and company data through an easy to understand info graphic. (In Japanese though so maybe not so to English readers!) we included average age, ability to drink, relationship stats, and our ratio of work.

This project was aimed at graduates, so we tried to put as much information in the leaflet that would interest the graduates and give the reader an idea of our employees.

We have two companies in our office, Choreo graphic and web design and Cloud software and application development. This makes for some interesting partnerships and projects aw we can have coding and software support as well as a completely different opinion from our cloud coworkers.

The companies are merged, but still separate enough to let us have our freedom. Mainly Choreo is full of young graduates and a few older members (I’ll be in there somewhere).

I’m currently the oldest woman working there. It’s a bit strange compared to the UK, but in Japan a lot of woman don’t aspire to careers, but rather to have a family. A Lot who have careers give it all up to raise a family. Same in the UK in a lot of cases, but the ratio here is very surprising. There’s a lot of companies that don’t have the facilities or support systems to allow women to come back to work after having children. Japan is so forward in some things, and stuck in others. But I digress..

Generally our company is full of young, energetic people who like events and dedicate themselves to their work. We are a team that works together and individually on so many different projects. Life at Choreo certainly is challenging. Not just because of the culture difference, but because of the challenges we receive at work and to surpass the expectations of our clients.

Recently the younger generation of our employees updated the information within the leaflet and it made it look slightly fresher!

http://www.choreo.co.jp/recruit/img/choreocloud_kaishaannai.pdf

 

 

 

 

Learning kimono dressing.

Almost everyone will ask if I have worn a kimono.. It’s just the thing to try when you live in Japan or even if you visit.

Now I wasn’t too big of a kimono fan, but then we got married and I wore a kimono and wow was that some kimono. It was like wearing a down payment on a house. Those things are expensive. Also impossible to dress yourself in.

Very very beautiful when dressed properly in. Our kimonos are for weddings. The girls beside us are wearing kimonos for unmarried ladies. Or rather girls coming of age. The long sleeves signify this. That and the very bright design.

Now to dress a kimono can cost a lot of money. My kimono along, without hair was about £600 for the dressing alone. The kimono rental.. We won’t go into too much painful detail.

Our boss loves to give us new opportunities to learn things, so her mother is teaching us how to dress ourselves in a kimono.

Not an easy task as there are many layers, tools, ropes and traditions involved. But we had our first lesson and somehow we managed to dress ourselves.

Kimonos are meant to be made for the person wearing it, so I haven’t got my own as yet.. Not sure I will get one! So expensive and apparently my hips are too big for kimonos. The ideal kimono makes you look flat straight up and down. No curves in these kimonos. So for the curvy lady, kimonos might make you feel fat.

The one I’m wearing is a normal one for married ladies that can be worn everyday. It’s far too small but it was cheap and second hand.

Looking forward to dressing myself in a kimono and wearing it out someday but for now my choices are limited and I really need to save up for one!

Here’s my dorky what am I doing here in such a typical westerner face..