5:56 AM

So Hershey did what she does best and woke me up in the wee hours of the morning for food. I had a pretty early night last night so, in addition to being awoken at five this morning I couldn't fall back asleep so, I guess this is it. Last night was the year-end party for Suisan highschool. In addition to the the regular staff at school they had the entire ship crew there which alone is 22 crewmen. It was fun, I saw some crazy drunken sailors, ate sea creatures that I didn't particularly care eating and had a pretty good shot at wining a Japanese lottery ticket in bingo until I was distracted by a teacher I had never seen before decided to come and speak English with me. Its OK though. I figure the odds of me winning that bingo was like 1/85 then on top of that, the odds of me winning the lotto was like 1/1,000,000,000 so I am not too put off but, if I catch wind that one of those tickets won, I'll probably go hang myself.

Well, its Christmas time again. Last year I had to work and, surprise surprise, this year I do too. Its understandable though that a nation predominately Buddhist doesn't care to recognize a mainly Christian holiday. I didn't throw any fits in America when we weren't celebrating the Festival of Floating Bowls so why should it be any different now? Anyways, I do get today off for the Emperors birthday- a day which I will use to... now that I am awake my whole plan is off so, nuts to that. But, I am not going to pass up a free day off so, yay!

For New Years this year we are again going to be going to Gifu to spend it with my wife's family. Her little sister is home from college and with me there, will be the first time in five years that everyone will be there. I just hope I don't feel too much like, as my coworker phrased it the other day, the 500 pound gorilla in the room. Looking forward to going though.