Returning "home"

It's already happened twice since I came back (to Mississauga) yesterday: I referred to going back to Towada as "going home."

But when I'm in Japan I also refer to coming back to Mississauga as "going home."

I guess I'm lucky that I have two places that I honestly feel I can call "home."

Christmas mania

Even though I've been preparing (buying things) for Christmas and even doing Christmas lessons at schools for over a month, I'm only beginning to feel the "Christmas spirit" now.

I spent the entire evening on Monday baking Christmas cookies (my regular chocolate chunk cookies but with red & green M&Ms added) for my students. Since it's my last year here, I decided to make cookies not only for the Kirita JHS students, but also for all of the students and teachers at the nearby feeder elementary schools--Kamikirida and Shimokirida ES. It took about six hours, but I managed to make 155 cookies in two batches--of which I gave away 154.

Even though it was really time-consuming (I was baking from 6-11pm), and I was tired because I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, baking the Christmas cookies was very soothing/relaxing. It made me feel happy in spite of my fatigue. Somehow, there's something about baking Christmas cookies that really puts me in the "Christmas spirit." Maybe it's because baking cookies has been my Christmas tradition since high school...

Anyway, after/while baking the cookies, I also wrapped presents for all of my Kirita students. In my first year, I only had one present for each grade (gingerbread house kits) and we played pass the parcel. Last year, though, I had tons of small "prize" things--SpongeBob files, pencil cases, etc.--that my mom had brought/given me, so I had one present for each student and we did the present swapping/stealing game in every class.

This year, I did the present swapping/stealing game with the first year students with the remainder of the prizes from my mom, but I bought a bunch of snacks and made presents for the second and third years as well. Since the students were generally too nice last year and didn't really steal presents from each other, I decided to skip the "game" and just give out the gifts to the second and third years this year.

But yeah between wrapping the presents and putting the cookies into individual gift bags, I ended up staying up until about...4am? And I was up the next day at 7:30am (about 30min. earlier than usual) to deliver the cookies to Kamikirida ES before going to Kirita.

Even though I am enjoying the Christmas preparations/lessons now, I'm also really looking forward to the plane ride back to Canada. I expect I'll be sleeping for almost the entire 13-hour flight! =P

Cooking failure ^^;;

Maybe it's because I've been reading a manga that talks about a lot of different foods-- 深夜食堂 (Midnight Restaurant) --lately, but recently I've developed a bit of an interest in cooking. Last week I even bought four cooking magazines (in Japanese, of course) and went through them, putting stickies on recipes I wanted to try.

Monday night (Dec. 7) was my first attempt at one of those recipes: 手羽元の肉じゃが風煮もの, "nikujaga" (meat & potatoes) style boiled (chicken) drumsticks. Unfortunately it was a bit of a failure.

Well, it was still edible, but there were a few problems with my cooking...

The first one was a circumstantial issue. While I was in the middle of cooking I got a call from the Monday night eikaiwa because no one had shown up. Turns out there was a miscommunication about the schedule so I ended up having to stop midway through cooking to go to the eikaiwa, and I didn't come back until an hour later. Luckily this interruption occurred before I actually started boiling everything, but it still probably wasn't the best thing for the recipe...

The next problem was that I completely forgot that the soy sauce I had in my pantry was dark soy sauce.

Lastly, I let everything boil for too long. At the end of the time recommended by the recipe, the potatoes were still a bit hard, so I decided to let it boil for a bit longer. Even though I was standing by the stove the entire time, I guess I was spaced out or something, because it ended up getting overcooked. ^^;;

Ah well. I'll just have to be more careful next time. (Although, I don't know when I'll have a chance to cook again since my schedule until winter vacation is crazy busy. And I'll probably go back to my "raw veggie" diet for a bit in January to try to compensate for all the' holiday binge eating.)

Here's a photo of the finished product.

It looks OK until you compare it to the photo from the recipe... ^^;; (You can really see what a difference it makes if you use dark instead of regular soy sauce...)

Car accident (#2) conclusion

So I finally got my car back on Nov. 27th and was amazed to see that it actually looked newer than when I first bought it! After that I sent word (via my supervisor, of course) to my insurance company that the car was repaired and everything was OK so the two insurance companies (mine and the obaachan's) could get things settled.

I was waiting to hear exactly how much and by when I would have to pay for my portion of the car repairs--did I mention before that the obaachan had kindly refused the need for me to pay for the damage to her car?--and finally got an email from Mukainakano-sensei today....

Turns out the obaachan actually (and very generously) insisted on paying for 100% of the damages from the accident, i.e. car repairs for both cars, plus my medical bills. @_@;; I still feel very shocked and humbled, and also rather regretful. 

As much as I complained about it, a tiny part of me (that I wanted to ignore) could kind of understand the logic behind the Japanese system of assessing responsibility/liability in the case of a multiparty accident, so I stopped feeling like it was "unfair." (Well, subjectively I still felt like it sucked, but when I looked at the situation objectively, I could accept the reasoning.)

[When I got the cost estimates from the insurance company, though, I did feel/wish, that I could have made things less costly for the obaachan (and myself) by buying a different used car. But she had requested that I repair the car so I acceded to her wishes. But I digress...]

I did mention in a post I wrote after the post about the car accident that I realized that I had misjudged the obaachan, but after learning that she had insisted on paying for 100% of the accident costs, I really regretted judging her so quickly (and harshly) in my initial post-accident blog entry.

Looking back, I realize that what I interpreted as "rudeness" could, with a kinder eye, be interpreted as mere brusqueness--likely partially attributable to personality but also probably partially attributable to shock from the accident. I guess I was too caught up in my own feelings/reactions to the accident to be able to step back and look at her actions from a different perspective. I mean, everyone reacts to shock differently. And courtesy/manners are really more a reflection of social skills than of character, so it was unfair of me to think of her as a "rude person" because her behaviour was abrupt/"rude".

Ahhh... I'm making a mess of things, but basically what I want to say is that I've realized that I should work harder not to judge people. This is really the first time I've understood (in my heart and not just my head) why God tells Christians not to judge others. And I feel regretful at my uncharitable thoughts about the obaachan when I think about the verse in 1 Samuel (16:7): "The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

All I could see was the obaachan's abrupt behaviour and the fact that she didn't explicitly say "I'm sorry." But now her actions have revealed an amazing sense of...integrity? Honesty?

I mean, even if you really felt 100% responsible, it would be easy to accept only 80% of the liability for practical, financial reasons. (And really, the repair cost wasn't a small amount.) If I was in her shoes, I really don't know if I'd be able to make the decision to do the same thing.


So yes, I feel incredibly humbled by her actions.

And I want to do my best from now on to draw conclusions about people less hastily and to give them the benefit of a doubt instead of assuming the worst--because only God knows what is truly inside a person's heart.

(Apologies if this post wasn't very coherent/intelligible--I'm still "in shock" from the outcome of the situation.)