Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! It's almost the end of January 1st in Japan, but we've been enjoying a rare day at home together just relaxing before the rush picks back up in a few days, so I haven't been thinking much about the blog.
We celebrated New Year's Eve with a nice dinner at the restaurant on base (all the Japanese places were closed for the holiday, which is more family-oriented here). We followed that with... sleep. This whole staying up till midnight thing just didn't make a lot of sense to either of us this year. We weren't going to any parties, and we couldn't find a single good reason to stay awake past about 10, so we went to bed. And it was wonderful.
When I first arrived in Japan, one of my friends told me that it snows twice a year in Sasebo: once on New Year's and once in Februaryish. I have been mildly skeptical about how accurate that could possibly be. Last New Years, we were on a ship somewhere near New Zealand (and loving it), so I was not around to confirm the rumor, but I did hear that it snowed some, so this year I was even more curious. Last night it wasn't cold enough to snow and the forecast was predicting that it would stay in the upper 30's so I went to bed thinking the rumor had been debunked.
Then I woke up this morning to the sound of precipitation hitting our window. I looked out and sure enough: snow. Nice pretty little flakes flew cheerfully around all morning and then promptly melted when they hit much of anything. It was a very pretty way to start the year. So may be it does snow every New Year's in Sasebo... we won't be around next year to have a retest, but I'll be watching the clouds in February.
We spent most of today just holed up inside enjoying a day off, as I mentioned. It's not often that both of us are actually in the house for more than a few hours in the evening. The Japanese people have big sales starting today, and I was advised by concerned students not to visit any shopping areas because it would be like Black Friday is in America and I might get hurt (they are all deeply concerned about my every move since I'm a bit bigger than the average Japanese pregnant lady). Tomorrow the sales will continue, and my students feel it might be safe to check them out then, but they still advise against it on the whole. It's a good thing I'm not much of a shopper anyway. I have heard from others, though, that it's really kind of fun to go out and see all of the locals going crazy over the sales, so we'll see what happens.
In the mean time, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year!