Christmas Dinners at Tokyo...

Christmas means gift rapping, Chrismas means chorus songs, and Christmas means EATING.
This year, I had not only once but three different Christmas dinners in Tokyo. Which means, three diets at least to write on the the To-Do-List for 2010, but let's not talk about boring things.

Family first :

MY CHRISTMAS SURPRISE DINNER WITH SISTER

It began with this : the huge Xmas package, full of good French specialities, sent by our darling parents... Chocolates, tapenade, foie-gras, marrons glaces, caramels, calissons...
Look at these chocolates. Isn't it a piece of art ? French cooks, we love you !

And then, for the little "local" touch : we went to the izakaya at Ebisu, and had delicious fried spring rolls and roasted tuna with cheese ! Merry Christmas !

Then, friends :

MY CHRISTMAS PIC-NIC WITH THE ETP FRIENDS

Most of the ETPs went back to their countries to celebrate Christmas with their families, but a few of us were still there and ready to have a toast ! Thank you again to Attila and Melinda for hosting the party, and to Nataly for her fine organization of the Christmas lottery !
Our hosts cooked meat pancakes and we had the most delicious "buche" covered with nuts and almonds.

Let's jump to the boyfriend time :

MY CHRISMAS ROMANTIC RENDEZ-VOUS

At restaurant Temari (Shinjuku), you can sit into nice balls which are supposed to represent the toys the little Japanese girls play with, but from my French point of view it looks like Christmas tree balls... No ?

We had absolutely delicious sushi-balls, meat balls, deep-fried chicken, and other delicious and funny meals.

Boyfriend has a family too. On the 26th, I had the honor to join :

MY CHRISMAS FAMILY MEETING

Hitoshi's cousin is a volunteer for the association Support 21, which helps the refugees' kids to get a good education and the best chances to succeed in the Japanese society. I had the chance to join this meeting where some of these former kids, now high-level students, were presenting their researches and sharing their experiences (in Japanese of course). There were Chinese, Viet-namese, Peruvian, Brazilian students and also a very interesting young woman, born from an English man and a Korean woman, raised in Japan and totally Japanese - she had to struggle a lot to learn another language than Japanese - who made a speech about identity and the difficulty to exist as a human when you don't belong to the classic categories. An during all this time, we had sweets and drinks, whithout speaking of this amazing Christmas chorus where another cousin of Hitoshi was singing (the first on the left).

Chorale de Noel - Tokyo December 2009

 And after that... the first cousin invited us to have a Chrismas nabe (a kind of light fondue, soy-sauce-based, with boiled meat, vegetables and udon in this case). I had the chance to visit her huge appartment with a great view on Tokyo Tower, and to meet her Canadian husband. And she cooked chocolate truffes too !

Thank you gentlemen for cooking the nabe !

And they have a real Chrismas tree, with the authentic smell ! That is the smell of Christmas !

Thank you everyone for this wonderful Christmas. It was delicious, colourful, tasty and funny ! Your smiles made it even more beautiful !