Home for Christmas

It's a bit late, but I'm finally updating my blog after a month's hiatus. It really is hard to keep this updated regularly when you're holding down a regular job!

I went home to Gig Harbor for Christmas. Unfortunately Yuko did not feel up to making such a long trip, and stayed in Tokyo. The weather was unseasonably warm - apparently I just missed a long coldsnap - so it was actually much nicer than Tokyo (if you don't mind the rain, which I don't really). I wish I'd brought some lighter clothes, actually. We mostly hung around the house, cooked and ate obscene quantities of food, and went shopping for presents for each other and ourselves. Mom had clearly exerted herculean efforts once again to decorate the house for Christmas; the place looked great. We had dinner up in Seattle one night, at Etta's, and saw my sister's new apartment on Capitol Hill; it seemed like a nice, older apartment with some character in a young, hip neighborhood of the city, and she seemed happy there. That said, I know KT misses all her friends back in DC.

Mom and Dad were really sick while we were there and coughing and sneezing and scrumbling all over the place the whole time. It was often difficult to carry on a conversation; you'd start saying something, and suddenly be drowned out by an explosion of toxic-sounding coughs and splutterings. Poor things, I know they didn't want to be sick, but it made me a little wary - I was constantly gargling and washing my hands so as not to get sick. It was probably a good thing that Yuko didn't come, as she tends to catch colds easily.


Gig Harbor was, as always, beautiful. The longer I live in Tokyo, though, the more distant Gig Harbor feels when I return. I'd love to move back permanently, but don't see it happening anytime soon. More than anything I just miss the enveloping quiet of the place: even the call of a single seagull across the bay echoes off the water and the trees, and drowns out all other sounds. My dream is that somehow I'll get to the point with my current firm where I can live most of the year in Gig Harbor, work remotely from there, and then travel to Tokyo or SF or wherever when I need to for work. We'll see if I can make it happen, but it's quite a long-term goal. Anyway, you can't find that kind of serenity in a place like Tokyo, but it does have other benefits.

Chief among those benefits is the food - not just that it's amazingly good, which it is, but more than that, I'm finding I can't eat American portions anymore. If I have an appetizer or a salad before the entre at an American restaurant, I can no longer even come close to finishing the entre anymore. We had that when we ate out one night in Tacoma. I suppose it's a good thing, really, but so surprising for me - I used to love huge portions and finish them off without a problem. Meals like the 6-egg omelet with a pound of hashbrowns and bottomless coffee and an OJ at the Sunriser cafe. No more, man.

My brother and I went running a couple of times, and he mercilessly kicked my butt around the backroads of Gig Harbor. I am clearly getting old, too old at least to keep up with an 18-year-old who runs varsity cross-country for his high school team. Still, it was good to get out there and move around, and to see Chris running so well. I'm going to try to run a half marathon in March, and keep up the momentum to run a full marathon sometime this Fall. That's my new year's resolution: run a marathon this year, before it gets too late for me to do it!

Finally, I thought my suitcases would be lighter going back to Tokyo, since I brought a load of presents out to Gig Harbor with me. But my family (and extended family) gave us so many presents, bless them, especially ones for Yuko and the baby, that I almost needed two whole suitcases to carry them all (one of our gifts was an extra suitcase). Our haul was so amazing that we laid it all out in Tokyo and photographed it. This doesn't even include a lot of presents just to me that I opened up in Gig Harbor - crazy, eh?

Merry Christmas!