At the end of year
I came back to my hometown today to spend New Year holidays with my family. Every time I come back here, I think of my sweet and bitter memories in my youth, and I feel life goes on.
As I am doing right now, I was writing my blog at the end of last year. One year...It could be short or might be long...It depends on how people feel. Me? It was fast. Many things happened to me, both good and bad things. No matter how life goes, everything would become good experiences. And I laugh at the end talking about the past.
I saw my family's smiling face today, and I just got a call from my uni friends having 忘年会 and other friend who is planning 新年会. I have this family-love and friendships, so that I can lead my life. Even though I live by myself, I feel close to them.
I just wanna thank everyone. I hope you had a good year and will have another beautiful year.
Christmas Jazz Concert
My friend Shirabe, who is a Jazz singer, held a Christmas Jazz concert on Dec 20. She had been excited about the concert, and so did I. I had saved the day for her concert since this summer.
She sang so many Christmas songs. Many people started dancing to her songs and I did too. Everyone enjoyed it.
Thank you Shirabe. You gave us enjoyable and beautiful moment. We enjoyed the Christmas atmosphere a lot. It was such a great concert. Thanks again.
CCU Girls Christmas Party
On Dec 13th, I had a Christmas party with my good friends staying a hotel over night. They are actually my ex-coworkers from my previous company, and all we, 10 women including me, are good friends as we joined the company at the same time ;-) We also had an opportunity to work in a same department called Customer Centered Unit (CCU) for about half a year as its starting members. Through a lot of experiences and discussions to make our services better, we became really good friends. Now all we work at different places, and I myself changed the company, but we still get together at least every one month.
We celebrated the happy events at the Christmas party, for one of us having her birthday in Dec and for another one getting married coming this Jan!!! We, except the birthday and wedding girls, planed the gifts, cake and message cards without telling them. We always give that kinda surprising presents every time when one of us have a birthday ;-) It is no longer "surprise" though! LOL
We stayed in an apartment hotel FRASER PLACE. The place was close to Shinjyuku and Shin-Okubo and it might not sound so fancy, but the hotel was far beyond our expectations!!! We chose a room of "2 Beds Super Deluxe (98 ㎡)". The room was usually for 3 people, but it was big enough and gorgeous. There were big kitchen, big living room, big bathroom, big bedrooms and home entertainments, etc! Plus, the price was not that bad. It was about JPY40,000 for 10 people for one night. We loved there!!!
We made almost three "teams" for the party. Two of us (1st group) checked in the hotel and prepared some meals. Three of us including me (2nd group) headed to the town to get some more foods, drinks, Christmas ornaments and a cake! And the last members came to the hotel after they finished their work or something. 1st group and 2nd group were calling to each other, like "Oh, we are missing a meat dish! Can you get chicken or something?" "Do we need baqet?" "We cannot find blar blar blar..." It was kinda hectic! LOL. There were too many people in the shops and on the street, so we (2nd group) got very exhausted holding and finding some stuff we needed. We were too tired to talk at the moment, though we always enjoy chatting! The party had not started yet, so we took a little bit break at the cafe to get ready for the party! We felt much better after the short break!
The party was of course a lot of fun! We enjoyed the dinner and exchanged presents. Each of us had bought a present at a cost of JPY2,000 yen. We have held the Christmas party every year 2 times in a row so far, but nobody got the same present! It's funny and surprising. It's literally "十人十色 (so many men, so many minds)".
As the evening went on, a few of us began to sleep. The problem was there were only one single bed and one double bed in the room. So what we did was...two of us slept on the single bed, four of us slept on the double bed, and one of us slept on a sofa, and I myself slept on 5 chairs connected. (Two of us did not stay at the hotel.) Well, it was not comfortable to sleep on the chairs, but it was not such a big deal for me. LOL.
All of us had a really great time together as you can imagine. How do you spend this Christmas season?
Eco and Charity Party
Our company held an Eco and Charity party at Friday night, Dec 5. It was just for employees and could be also considered as our Year-end and Christmas party, but this year, we focused on nature and charity.
The theme of the party was “Green Carpet”, “nature-friendly”, or something related to eco. Some dressed up with green dresses, some wore ガチャピン’s costumes, some became Green Man! (not Blue Man Group!) There were also some green Santa Clauses.
Everyone was having a lot of fun. 
Dancing, eating, chatting, drinking, etc… It was nice to talk with those who work at different departments.
We made about JPY4mio at the charity party. With mutual cooperation…
