Our first Christmas in Tokyo started early, as can be expected with an over-excited 5 year old.
But not with the happy sounds one would normally hear. Rhiannon marched into our room at 5.30am, crying her eyes out!
Between her sobbing she cried "Santa hasn't been to see me and I have been good, mostly".
Bless her, she was so bleary that she'd stepped right over her stocking without noticing it. So I took her back to her room to "see if Santa had hidden it" (rather amazed I was on the ball at that time in the morning...)
Cue one very happy child!
After breakfast, the doorbell rang. We'd forgotten that it was a normal working day here, and the postman was delivering. Along with a number of Christmas cards, he brought a large and heavy parcel from Tim.
How wonderful! He'd got me a breadmaker!! Now, this isn't normally something I would get happy about receiving for Christmas, and ordinarily would contribute to considering divorce proceedings. But bread here tastes horrible and costs around £3 for half a dozen slices, so it was a welcome gift.
This was a well-travelled breadmaker apparently. It was ordered from the States as the electricity here is only 100V rather than the 240V in the UK (which is why I hadn't shipped mine from there). American electrical goods work here, whereas UK machines need a huge, clumsy transformer. But I digress: the breadmaker had travelled to Jamaica (a computer operator error, I guess, as Jamaica is just above Japan on the standard list of countries), then back to Kentucky and then up the coast to Alaska where it got stuck in a snowstorm. But fortuitously arrived on Christmas Day.
Lunch was a success. Apart from the lack of Christmas pudding and the fact that the mysterious "cakes" I'd brought were completely disgusting! I think they were made from rice and contained red-bean paste. An acquired taste, that none of us will acquire any time soon.
Standard after-lunch constitutional around the gardens again, then for more exploring up the little alleyways surrounding our house. We discovered a tiny shrine not far away, which is very picturesque.
What a lovely day, wonderful gifts, lovely family and no miserable British weather. In the evening, once Rhiannon had finally been packed off to bed, we were able to relax with a good film and no boring BBC TV repeats.
Heaven!
