How I Spent My Winter Vacation

 

Winters will never be as fun without vacations. And it’s best to spend them wisely (and sometimes lazily) to make a great record of a relaxing lifestyle. 

Working with dozens of lovely toddlers, stressful teens, and overly-majime colleagues can drag you straight to bed after work, especially when the season is at the peak of a zero degrees Celsius, or even lower. I’m thankful that my company, despite its controversial pay check system, has some considerations for the well-being of its ALTs: a three-week paid vacation both for summer and winter break.

While others spent there time abroad to see their families, or bar-hopping with unknown fellows who might become their potential friends or lovers, I planned my itinerary with my husband (oh, I love how that sounds) on humble travels and eat-outs just around Hokkaido. Honestly, I really wanted to go to the other side of Japan, but the paranoia about COVID really restricted my guts, but that’s okay. After all, we need to fill up our wallets for our honeymoon in May!

Household Chores

I began my first weekend by washing clothes in batches, washing dishes sometimes, and vacuuming the floors. It wasn’t really a breeze to begin with, but having a tidy apartment during the holidays can bring a good feeling and a pleasant sight. Most of the time I was home alone, because the first week of my vacation was still working days for my poor husband. And to somehow make him feel good, I volunteered myself to do his stuff at home like dishwashing. I wish I could clean the bathroom and toilet for him, but I guess I’m just too disgusted to do that!

Steak and Mashed Potatoes

Our Christmas and New Year’s Eve went simple like before—home cooked meals. I prepared steak and mashed potatoes for Christmas, and, if I remember, we had daikon nabe for New Year’s Eve. After all, we live in the countryside and these holidays are not really celebrated by the Japanese. Boring, right!? 

It was also my first time to see Shingo’s Buddhist altar in his home. He taught me how to pray there, and showed me the displaying of the omamori  at the small altar at the upper left of the room. I prayed that we would have an adventurous, safe, and healthy year, and hopefully win the lottery (yeah, I spent 3,000 yen for that one last November!)

Shiroi Koibito

It’s been several months before we properly traveled to Sapporo again. We went there last November though, only for him to buy lotto tickets, LOL. We attempted to take a look at the famous Shiroi Koibito for my blogging, but failed because we were too late, so we tried again last 3rd of January. We had fun, and I enjoyed taking videos with my GoPro, too.

Late Christmas Cards

Working in school as an ALT may sound like a piece of cake to others, but not in my case, especially during the last few weeks before vacations. From the start of November, I already had countless tasks to do, and only little time to rest upon coming home. It was a bad idea to start buying Christmas cards in mid-December and preparing them one by one to dozens of my pen pals, so next time I’ll start buying and preparing them once they are out at the stores as soon as possible.

Walking outside

Because of the fear of having another bloated tummy after the holiday meals, I decided to take walks in the mornings during a sunny weather or a possible warm cloudy day. Because why not? I started doing it a week after Shingo returned to work, instead of sitting all day at home in our kotatsu, shedding all the hours through Netflix, Disney Plus, and Desperate Housewives. It did help with the slimming thing, especially that our apartment isn’t warm enough for me to do workouts. Well, yeah, that was a lame excuse and I won’t deny that, haha!

So, that’s the core of what I did during my winter vacation. I have two days left before going back to work, but all in all, I’d say it’s a great one! I’m not excited to go back to work, but three weeks is enough for me to have long dates with my kotatsu. After all, I can’t wait to wear my new blazer that I got from Aeon at Hassamu for about 2,000 yen.