This year was Stephen and my first ever white Christmas, and Niseko turned on the snow and everything looked beautiful. Blue skies during the day and then snow falling from about 5pm.

I worked during the day while Stephen lay in bed recovering from a big Christmas eve night out. Then come 6pm we were all home in our apartment (Stephen, Marie, and her boyfriend Yoshimi, and me), and I started cooking Christmas dinner. It was a little bit of a challenge. 1: Ingredients are different over here and some things we take for granted in Australia are a little hard to come by here. And 2: we don’t have an oven or a bbq, so I had to rethink the menu a little. So our Christmas dinner went a little something like this…
A small platter to begin with, with cheese and crackers and nuts and fruit.
Followed by delicious tender steak, honey glazed carrots, baby peas, corn on the cob, and some ‘roast’ potato wedges (which I cooked in the microwave and then fried in butter in the pan). Everything actually turned out really well, and although this would be an extremely simple meal back home, it was nice to have just that: a simple meal with meat and veg.
Finally, we had some chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. I did some experimenting and made the cake in the rice cooker (!!) and it turned out so well!

All in all it was a great Christmas evening and it was lovely to share this day with some new friends here in Japan.

Merry Christmas everyone!

M & S.

PS. A big thank you to my parents, and to Sharon (Stephen’s mum), who sent us Christmas packages in the mail!! They were full of goodies and it’s been so lovely having a few little comfort things from home. Thanks family xx