Christmas at Nakanayoro

I once again have not blogged in a long time, so I apologize. I've been trying to arrange a trip home in January, and I finally have it all settled. I am going back to Canada for 10 days in January, and I couldn't be more excited!

I wanted to plan a special Christmas party for my students at Nakanayoro. They gave me an hour and 50 minutes with the kids, so it gave me tons of time to do pretty much whatever I wanted. In Japan at Christmas time they eat "Christmas cake" and therefore my students have never heard of Christmas cookies, or Christmas baking. So I had the brilliant idea of making cookies with my students. The more I thought it over though, I began to realize it would not be an easy task, especially since the oven in my school is the size of a small microwave(because it actually is a microwave, just with an oven setting). So then I decided that I would just make the cookies myself, because I also have one of those microwave/oven combined things, and mine is just slightly bigger than the one at Nakanayoro. I would then have the kids decorate them. How hard could that be?

Haha.

It all began when I drove around Nayoro looking for Christmas shaped cookie cutters. Well, I should have realized that if they don't make Christmas cookies in Japan, I wasn't going to find Christmas shaped cookie cutters in Nayoro. Ok, well, this wasn't enough to get me down, I had a conference in Sapporo on Monday and Tuesday, and the party wasn't until Thursday, and Sapporo being the largest city in Hokkaido, there had to be Christmas cookie cutters there. I checked out a few stores, and I finally found some, gingerbread people shapes, a star, and a tiny Christmas tree. Success.

I got back on Tuesday night at 8:30, and thought that I better get a start on the cookies. I made 2 batches of sugar cookie dough, and started my cookie making extravaganza. My "oven" caused me a few problems, the first being it is so small I could only cook about 10 cookies at a time. The second was that because it isn't actually a real oven, the heat was very uneven, which made for quite a few burnt cookies.

Another problem, not crappy-oven related, was my love of cookie dough. Your stomach can only tolerate so much, and I am very sure I crossed the line... It didn't help that I also enjoyed eating all the of broken baked cookies too... Anyway, moving on...

So it's a good thing that I started on Tuesday, because I sure as hell didn't finish all of them that night. I continued my cookie making the next day too.

I realized I didn't have anything for the kids to decorate the cookies with, so I thought I would just buy pre-made colored icing in those cans. Haha, forgot I was in Japan, no such luck! Must make the icing myself... crap. Thank god I found tiny packets of icing sugar, each containing only about half a cup. I won't get started on how tiny the food packaging is here, I'll save that for another blog, but seriously... I bought 3 packets and hoped it was enough... Also found candy to put on the cookies, which actually was intended for making Christmas cake.

Made the icing Thursday morning before my class. So I actually did succeed in making enough cookies for my class, about 100 I think, only after 2 days of cookie making hell.

The lesson went well, the kids make a lot of adorable cookies, and I though maybe they would take them home or something, maybe show them off, but instead they ate them right after they finished decorating them. In 2 minutes all of my cookies disappeared. Hours and hours of baking was gone. I guess that was the point... Needless to say, I certainly have a lot more respect for the amount of time my mom puts into Christmas baking.

And to finished of my long, drawn out, cookie-making saga, here are some pictures from my Nakanayoro Christmas party!