Grumpiness...
Oh, I can’t wait for school to start! Rhiannon is becoming stir crazy and driving me up the wall. She doesn’t like walking anywhere (can't say I blame her there, to be honest!); she doesn’t want to do this or that, just stay in playing PC games, watching TV or worse, playing Barbies’! Of course, with Mum here, I am obliged to show her the sights, and, with Tim at work, this means my whinging daughter has to come too. Counting the days to the start of the school term in January...
In emails to friends, my words were “She is being a right royal pain in the ass”, so, even though I cannot remember exactly what she was doing, she was obviously being rather annoying.
I can’t even escape to the PC in the evenings as Tim’s on there all night while I entertain Mum until she finally goes to bed at midnight. Whatever happened to her jetlag?
Still, Mum’s been wonderful – her stamina is as incredible as usual and I end up totally exhausted after traipsing around showing her the few places we've discovered so far. We went to Tokyo Hands a couple of times, where Mum was in her element with all the craft stuff. I also bought a few more Christmas decorations to show willing: I'm a bit "Bah, Humbug!" about Christmas.
And she kindly bought me a whole load of houseplants so I'm finally beginning to feel that this house is home now. Getting them back was interesting on the Metro and we had to have one large tree delivered. I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to do that with no Japanese language skills at all. But sure enough, it arrived later that day - how wonderful!
At this point I still had no idea what we are going to have for Christmas dinner! None of us fancied the epic trek to Nissin, and the local supermarket doesn’t stock any meat larger than a chicken leg.
Then, a revelation! On one of our exploratory trips around Shibuya, we discovered that the department stores have food halls in their basements! Usually running over 2 floors, with one floor housing a supermarket while the other has all kinds of unusual and tasty looking ready meals.
The supermarket we found was like Harrods Food Hall on steroids. It had the most amazing items on sale and we managed to find, of all things, Marmite!
Meat is still extremely expensive but we did find a nice big chicken, so that’s what we will be having for Christmas Day. It was the only recognisable and affordable thing. Half a kilo of stewing steak was £20... so I'd better make sure I make THE most fabulous stew! Luckily we don't like turkey, anyway.
We spent more time gazing at the unusual foods on display than actual shopping. Some of the fish was incredible and the veggies totally mindblowing in their unusualness. And as for the mushrooms... well, they look like the things Mum always said not to eat in her garden because they're poisonous.
A giant fish-head gazing up at us through its dead eyes made us jump. I guess it was a tuna but the size just blew me away – easily the size of two human adult heads. There was also a slice of fish that cost approximately £500 for something the size of a lamb chop. Again, I have no idea what it was, but the price was seriously impressive.
Also incredible were the number and size of “gift fruit” – melons the size of footballs selling for £100. Apples twice the size of the ones we’re used to in Britain for £10 each and luscious peaches of similar proportions and prices. Each were lovingly wrapped and presented.
We bought the “ordinary” ones.
Sadly we were unable to find a Christmas Pudding, so we will forgo that tradition this year, and instead buy a typically Japanese Christmas Cake instead. A beautiful (yet very un-Christmassy) confection of cream, sponge and strawberries.
We've also got blue crisps (!) and something completely unknown as an experiment. I don't know whether it's sweet or savoury so that should be fun. They are little pink cakey looking items, tastefully decorated. I feel slightly more relaxed now that I know what we are going to eat for our first Christmas dinner in Japan.
