Thanksgiving and a little more

I will begin by telling the tale of Thanksgiving.

Canadians make up a large part of the employees at Nova. There may be more Aussies, but I would contest that claim. So, because it was thanksgiving weekend last week, I decided with another Canadian that it would be awesome to have a thanksgiving. At first it was going to be dinner thing, but those are hard to pull in Japanese mini-apartments. There's also no turkey in the whole of Japan.

After much deliberation, we decided that a snack potluck would be a better idea, but we still had a problem with actually having people in one spot. The good bars are expensive, and the cheap bars wouldn't keep us together. Then it hit us: drinking in public is legal. Drinking in a park is legal!

Canadian thanksgiving was held in a park near my work. We met at a central location, and then went to the park. We invited everyone, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis, Australians, English and Scots. Most Brits didn't believe that there was actually a thing called Canadian thanksgiving. They thought we were joking. They were pretty surprised to see we were serious.

During the party, hung out, which then turned into a game of tag around a jungle gym, which then turned into huge circle where everyone talked, which turned into all the Canadians (and one Aussie oddly enough)singing the national anthem, then high-fiveing everyone thanking them for showing up.

Lessons learned: playing tag while drunk is dangerous... I ripped a pair of pants and was bleeding quite a bit. I'm a fun drunk. The Brits think I'm an alcoholic, but laugh about it anyways. Getting drunk in a park is very legitimate in Japan.

Speaking about legitimate and parks in Japan, a few friends and I saw a girl and a boy make themselves a makeshift bed, then put a cover over themselves. I will infer that they were having sex in a public park. So, another lesson, sex in public is fine.

Public urination in Japan: fine, people are so polite here, they pretend not to see you.

Public defecation in Japan: also fine. Once again, polite, to the extreme.

Blowing your nose in public: horrible. You're going to hell if you do that in front of someone. Blowing your nose in public, that's disgusting!