It is the dawn of December and it looks like I\u2019m starting to catch a cold. As a certified optimist, I know that it is good to suffer through a cold now and get it out of my system before we travel here and there for the holidays. I\u2019m doing all I can to fight it off – gargling iodine medicine, washing my hands ten times a day, drinking liters and liters of water while I work. We\u2019ll see how effective these regimens turn out to be.<\/p>\n
Early December means the mad dash to wrap up our Christmas shopping and try to get things in the mail as soon as possible. We\u2019re in pretty good shape, actually, but there are still a few little things here and there that we\u2019d like to add in to complete the packages we\u2019ll be sending. Luckily we found a post office open 24\/7 in Kobe, and that\u2019ll make things a lot easier.<\/p>\n
December 1st is also the day for winter bonuses in Japan. I am lucky enough to be in a position to receive one, and it makes the holidays a little easier having an extra cushion in the bank account. Unlike many Japanese people I don\u2019t count on the bonus as part of my budget – a bonus is a bonus to me – but many of my students have already spent that money using credit cards last month.<\/p>\n
One of the things I\u2019d like to do with part of the bonus money is buy a truffle. I\u2019ve been big into truffles lately but I\u2019d really like to hold an actual truffle and see what it is all about. Truffle oil and truffle salt are fine products but that is like making an evaluation of wine by tasting wine-flavored chocolates. So I\u2019ll probably buy a small truffle online and hope that it is in fact a European truffle (when likely it is an overpriced Chinese truffle). For about 6000 yen there is not that much risk, so later once the holidays blow over I\u2019ll make the plunge.<\/p>\n
This weekend is our first holiday party (we\u2019re hosting two this year, and joining the Fukumi\u2019s for another) and so I had better get my holiday ham skills ready. Our little oven has been making odd squeaking noises lately, and I have the feeling that this might be the last season for the little white hotbox. We\u2019ve had our eyes on a replacement, but of course there are no big American-sized ovens available for some real baking power. One of the small sacrifices about living in Japan, I guess!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is the dawn of December and it looks like I\u2019m starting to catch a cold. As a certified optimist, I know that it is good to suffer through a cold now and get it out of my system before we travel here and there for the holidays. I\u2019m doing all I can to fight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-Nk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}