On bunnies.

Well, here we are. The end of another year.

One of my first photos of the year - view from our window, January 2014.

This one's a bit different for me. Every year since I was five, when I looked back on the previous twelve months I could be guaranteed to see the same thing - two school years with a summer in between. And yet even though my year could be separated into three ostensibly different chunks, each chunk was mostly not that different from the last and it all became a bit mushy and indefinable. But I moved to Japan on January 27th (give or take, once you factor in all the messing around with time zones) so pretty much the entire year was given over to one big Thing which was different from all previous Things. Hooray for that, I guess.

It's not all been excitement. There was an adjustment period with a lot of sleeping and food-related suspicion involved. There was adjustment to full-time, long-term work, to full-time living in a relatively small space with another human, adjustment to newfound illiteracy. I'll spare you all the self-discovery bollocks, I'm not that tedious. But to cut it short, I found new things which I didn't know I could do. I learned to deal in a foreign language, but far more importantly, I learned to deal when my knowledge of that language wasn't enough and I had to wallow in embarrassment and confusion and come through the other side. I climbed a mountain. I talked to strangers every day, for a living, and walked into rooms with them time after time and sat down to chat with them like I was their friend and as if there wasn't anything remotely weird about the situation. I've pretended to be Cthulhu for the amusement of foreign toddlers who haven't the faintest idea what Cthulhu is. I've been to Kyoto, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Tokyo, Kamakura, Sapporo and Hakodate. I've been to three different types of animal café and a ramen museum. I've dressed up as a crab for work purposes. I've conquered my fear of waterslides. I've seen sumo. I've forgotten what a train delay is. I've had a matronly old woman firmly swish a cross through my imperfect calligraphy, again and again until with a smug gleam of satisfaction, I made it perfect. I've eaten eel. I've failed to ski.

Sorry, I forgot the part about cutting it short. The point is, I grew and all that bollocks.

If you're curious about what my plans are for 2015, they still lie in murky, swampy, squelchy uncertainty. I'll be staying in Japan for at least the first half of the year, but have chosen to switch to a part-time contract after March. This means I will have to spend a little bit less on sweets and goth dresses, but will have more time to study Japanese, travel, and work harder on personal projects like making my writing less awful. After Japan? I quite like not knowing yet.

If you're curious, the last week of this festive period has been quite quiet for me, though I like it that way. Christmas is fairly unremarkable in Japan; although there's a lot of commercial hoo-hah and lots of Christmas songs playing in the shops, the actual day itself matters to few and the most hallowed tradition is eating KFC. Nonetheless, we had a very nice Christmas with a tree, a viewing of the second Hobbit film, lots of complaining about the rubbishness of the second Hobbit film and an all-you-can-eat buffet for dinner. The last couple of days were also pleasantly low-key (or lazy, if you prefer): mostly walks, coffee-drinking and one small trip to a bunny café.

Now it's the early hours of New Year's Day, and today/yesterday was just as quiet. Which is how I like it, because I've always hated New Year. But we did slip out for an hour to Osu Kannon - the first temple we ever saw here, and our favourite - to see people lining up to pray and ring the temple bell. (Each temple bell can only be rung exactly 108 times on New Year's Day, so getting the opportunity is a big deal.) We only stayed briefly, but the atmosphere was warm, and unlike in the U.K. almost no-one looked like they were about to glass someone. A man dressed as Darth Vadar even turned up, to comfort those who had been waiting a long time. I saw a lot of people eagerly waiting for the countdown so they could open their celebratory beers. I saw an older Western man smoke a cigar effusively and laughing. And I saw many officials with loudhailers telling people to stay calm, though they didn't really need to. When midnight struck, the first waves of templegoers rushed to the front in the most orderly, polite manner possible, so they could pray for their wishes to be granted. I hope yours are too.

あけましておめでとうございます. Happy New Year.