Japanese Santa? 
The Japanese Santa was found in downtown Sendai, while I was there over Thanksgiving. Here's Kirsten and me with him in the background.
This was our wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at the Bengtsons' house in Sendai, complete with an amazing turkey and lots of American-tasting food! We ate so much we had to wait a few hours AND go out for a walk before dessert.
After Thanksgiving, I came back to a church with lots of "Illumination" (a word I have heard used by Japanese to describe Christmas lights, decorations, and even colorful fall leaves...). Mrs. Miyakawa loves making flower arrangements, so we have lots of decorations inside the church too.
Here is an arrangement she made for my apartment with a pointsettia, pinecones and branches painted white, and my nativity scene next to it.
Here's a flower arrangement I made at an afternoon workshop at the church. We made them so that the tree-like thing in the background can be placed on top of the flowers and the large flower stick out underneath it.
Thank you to all the family, friends and L.B. churches that have been keeping my mailbox well-stocked this month! I love hearing from you, and it really brightens up my kitchen!
On December 8th, I played trumpet at the Christmas program for Hallelujah Nursery (one of the places I teach). This was one intense nursery program! Each age (1-5) had a 15+ minute demonstration of random things like gymnastics, pretending to eat lunch, singing and dancing/hopping, bunny-racing, etc. But the best part was the costumes - bunnies, bears, kittens, puppies, mice, and... pirates!On Friday night (the 14th), our Mana group at the church had a Nabe Party. Nabe is a big pot of soup with lots of ingredients served during the cold months. Since the meal is all served from one big pot, it's seen as a type of bonding experience, too. There are many varieties of nabe, but we chose to make "mizore nabe" - "sleet storm nabe." White daikon radish is grated and dumped on top of the pot at the end, so it looks like sleet. It's been snowing/raining a lot here lately, so it was very appropriate :) Other ingredients included: salmon, chicken meatballs, another type of fish, cabbage, mushrooms, clear noodles, more mushrooms, onions, and some other vegetables.
We also made tako-yaki. Here they are adding the tako (octopus). In my opinion, everything with octopus in it tastes a little like soap, but I still like it. I enjoyed the tako-yaki, until they discovered that shrimp-powder was an ingredient in one of the ingredients, and we figured I should stop eating them.
I'm very allergic to shrimp... I search through the ingredient-lists (for 3 different 2-character combos meaning "shrimp") on everything I buy, but maybe there's a tiny bit of shrimp in everything here, so I'll build up a tolerance to it... For now, I just pray half the time that I'll live through a meal...
The nabe, ready to be served by Yoshi, our strong leader...
You can't see any of the ingredients of the nabe because the "sleet" is covering it all.
Today (Saturday the 15th) I had two different kids' Christmas parties. The first was at Tsukigaoka church, next to my home. Here's our happy "genkan" (entry-way) filled with shoes and boots:
Activities for the kids included decorating cookies, making pinecone ornaments, singing "Jingle Bells", playing games, and watching a Christmas movie. Keiko and I played some Christmas carols, trading off flute and trumpet and then playing a couple as duets.
I teach the cutest kids...
Even the sick ones came! ^ 
This was my favorite ornament made by one of my students
(just don't tell the kids that I had a favorite).
After that party, I went to Mitake Chapel for a party with my students there. Keiko and I played more carols, and I attempted to play a duet with Pastor Ohara playing horn. We had never played together before, though, so it was a little rough...
At Mitake Chapel, the kids watched a video, sang some carols, made ornaments/keychains, ate "hot-cakie" (pancakes), and did a 105-yen (dollar-store items) gift exchange.
I've had a hard time narrowing down my photos to put some on here... the kids are all just so cute...
Pastor Ohara played the guitar as we sang "Merry Chrismas, Merry Christmas, Happy Day! Happy Day!" to the tune of "Frere Jacques" and passed around the gifts. I won Winnie the Pooh stationery, so if you get a letter from me on it, you'll know why!
And a final photo, just for kicks. Read the last line on the bottle carefully:
