The Festive Season

There is not much to do in Muroran over Christams. Yes, I know, a rather controversial statement to make but, hey, that's us here at Teach Gaynor-Takahashi, always pushing the media envelope. Unlike back home where the festive season is replete with horse racing (hello Mother and Barry), Christmas swims (hello Uncle Willy), frenzied sale shopping (hello my sisters), inter-provincial rugby (hello Uncle Anthony), things are decidedly muted in this part of the world. Part of this is due to the climate of course - there's not an awful lot you can do when the mercury is resolutely in the minus and it's blizzarding. Shovel snow of course, twice in the same day (as we did yesterday), though that doesn't exactly fill you brimful of joie de vivre. Geography plays a part too for if we were living in Tokyo there would a multitude of cultural events across a multitude of museums, galleries, and concert halls to attend. Here in Muroran we have Sky movies. Mind you in Memuro, where Sanae's mother lives and where we are due to spend the next week, we don't even have that. Nor the internet. There is electricity though, and running water, so by 19th century standards we are larging it.
All this is a long preamble to the long walk myself and Cian took yesterday for the lack of anything better to do. There's only so many times you can re-watch 'Arthur's Christmas' before the suspense wears off (Will Santa get the present to Gwen's house before she wakes up on Christmas morning? He will. Each and every time). So off we went, out into the great white yonder, for a stroll/tramp around the extended neighborhood.
It was cold.
Well, it was cold for me, it was fine for Cian as we were moving at his pace. This is a considerably slower land speed than what Daddy is used to. You would think I would have adapted having been married to a hobbit for a close on a decade now, but no, I feckin froze. Matters weren't helped by all the enforced stops we had to make as 'old man Cian' kept needing a 'break' every few minutes. What normally takes me a brisk 40 minutes took close on 2 hours and by the end of it I knew how Aspley Cherry-Garrad must have felt.