Last Friday was the Christmas party for Amakusa ALTs, held at the house of yours truly. This year, we did a pot-luck style dinner, with everyone bringing a little something to share. The party officially started at 7:30, but our first guests didn’t arrive until about 8, giving Amanda and I a little more time to clean around the house.
For our part, Amanda and I had purchased two iCon boxes from McDonalds that were full of chicken related products. In Japan, chicken is the signature food of Christmas, along with Christmas cake. Since Christmas is not a national holiday here, you can purchase chicken from KFC and McDonalds on Christmas day. I believe KFC was the one to popularize this dish as a Christmas food in the 70s. The in-house story has it that a foreigner came in and ordered a lot of chicken, remarking about the difficulties of finding turkey in Japan and concluding that chicken would have to do.
Thankfully, not all our guests kept with the theme of chicken, offering up dishes like an amazing pasta bake, chips and salsa, dried cranberries, garlic bread, and spam onigiri. Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered the plate and silverware needs of our guests and many of them had to settle for tiny dishes. I’ll know better next time.
Though a Christmas party, the get together followed the pattern of nearly all ALT social events. We sat around and talked about work, our coworkers, our kids and hilarious stories from back home, especially in Jonathan’s case. We didn’t have a lot of people show up, but I was surprised by some of the Amakusans that chose to attend. It was a nice, casual occasion that gave us all the opportunity to unwind and relax during what is otherwise a pretty stressful time for ALTs. We played a few Christmas songs to remind us that yes, indeed, this was the Christmas party.
Eventually, we dug out the taiko drums and played a little Taiko No Tatsujin Wii 3 and, more hilariously given its participants, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. Jonathan was quite enthusiastic about both, trying his best on Taiko while refusing to not play anything less than the difficult setting. Erik was reluctant to play Taiko, though I have no idea why as he did really well. Amanda and I naturally enjoyed it, though I feel the song selection is a bit lacking.
Watching Erik and Jonathan play Resident Evil was a blast too. I had forgotten most of the controls, so some of their problems came from my incompetence. Still, between the jump scares, skipping all the cutscenes (and then making remarks about how they were “randomly” fighting something), taking turns trying for headshots, and declaring how badass they were it was a lot of fun. They unlocked quite a few new items and earned a bunch of money as well, so there’s also that. And really, what better way to celebrate Christmas than by taking on hoards of the undead.
The party went pretty late. I got to bed around 3. We had a few guests stay the night, but they were gone by the time we got up the next day. All in all I think it was a pretty successful party, though perhaps not the most overtly Christmasy one.
No comments:
Post a Comment