Wow!  I can’t believe Christmas is here already.  Time flies when you’re having fun huh (or they fly when you’re busy)?  Honestly, I haven’t had the opportunity to relax and truly experience the holidays this year.  I think the difference between this year and all of the other years is that I’ve started working.  I wonder if I’m actually becoming a responsible adult??? When I was still a student, as soon as winter break hit, I was able to turn my brain off, focus on training, and enjoy the holiday festivities.

However, I’m glad to say that I am done with my work for the rest of the year.  Now I can just focus on training and resting when I’m not in the gym.  Pretty nice for a change! Definitely looking forward to paying back the sleep debt I’ve built up during the last couple of weeks as well.

Speaking of Christmas and the holidays, I remember that exactly one year ago, I was still in Japan finishing up school.  Spending Christmas in Japan was quite a different experience (a bit odd for me also, given that I grew up in the US).  A few things that I observed and saw interesting was that the Japanese see Christmas as a couples’ holiday. Couples go on dates and go eat at a fancy restaurants, and all of this is usually done on Christmas eve.  No family Christmas time in the land of the rising sun.  They also have a tradition of selling specially decorated Christmas cakes.  I did my research and read somewhere that this was a strategy started by cake stores to boost their businesses.  Pretty similar to the tradition of Valentines I suppose.  Finally, the thing that irked me was they started decorating for Christmas as soon as Halloween ended.  In the states, Christmas comes after Thanksgivings.  However, since they don’t celebrate Thanksgivings there, decorations were up for a two whole months.  I’m not saying that I don’t like Christmas.  In fact, I’m all about the spirit of giving and spending time with families, but by the time Christmas actually rolled around, the actual holiday didn’t seem all that special because it seemed to have lasted too long.

Well, enough about Christmas in Japan.  This year, I’ll be spending time with my family and resting for a couple of days to recharge my batteries.  I’m hoping to feel refreshed when I get back in the gym next week and to close the rest of the year strong with great practices!

Happy Holidays everyone!