Home > Focus on Japan 2011, Ikebukuro > Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2011

2011 has been a long year for us, with unusually extreme ups and downs. This was the year of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. It was also the year we lost Sachi’s father and my mother.

On the other end of things, however, we bought a car, got our brilliant little puppy Ponta, and bought a new house. I was even supposed to get Spanish citizenship, though that was thwarted at the last moment by Spanish bureaucracy (I’ll almost certainly get it later, though). Things have changed fast, making life today almost unrecognizable from what it was a year ago.

So here’s looking towards a bright future, with greetings from us here in the Poza household.

Here is our Christmas Card (enlarge on click) for this year:

Pozas-Merry-Christmas

And yes, I photoshopped the license plate, we don’t really have all fives. If you would like to see Sachi’s souped-up and doggie-fied version of this, go check out the post at Shiba Me.

Merry Christmas!

Categories: Focus on Japan 2011, Ikebukuro Tags: by
  1. December 25th, 2011 at 18:30 | #1

    Nice beard, Luis :)

  2. December 25th, 2011 at 18:35 | #2

    Oh, and “Spanish” .
    Better safe than sorry, huh?

  3. brad
    December 26th, 2011 at 09:04 | #3

    That’s a lovely Christmas card.

    The citizenship thing threw me for a loop but Leszek sort of unrolled that one (and threw me through another).

    I’m sorry to hear about your mother; I’d missed that in my sporadic visits to your blog.

    I hope you had a great Christmas! Best wishes for the new year.

  4. Troy
    December 26th, 2011 at 15:17 | #4

    Lookin’ good. Nice to get off of the rent rack and into your own place! Actually having a car in Japan is an alien idea to me but it looks nice!

    I miss Christmas/New Years in Tokyo. I liked how everything seriously shuts down for the week.

    And the Siberian cold! Let’s you know winter’s for real!

    Here in California we’ve had a high pressure ridge camped over us for a month now so we’re still in the teens, temp-wise. Still wearing shorts outside, LOL.

    The Fukushima crisis wasn’t totally as out of control as my worst fears, but it certainly was just about as bad as I was fully expecting.

    The 3/11 event was massively dislocating but not 1/10th as bad as WW2 was for Japan at least.

    I wish I was 20-something again and not 40-something. With Japan’s ongoing depopulation there might be more opportunity for young foreign guest workers who can fit into the Japanese system. But at my age it’s harder to be a worker bee!

    Still hope to get back to Japan if not Tokyo later this decade. Sooner rather than later if the electorate screws things up next year.

  5. kensensei
    December 27th, 2011 at 07:22 | #5

    Too bad the Spanish bureaucracy. You look Spanish enough to me!

    Maybe go for the Japanese citizenship instead. I’m sure Ponta can sponsor
    you haha.

    Merry Christmas to all three of you.

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