On behalf of all the TNBBC (to all the invisible readers who don't leave comments but who show up in the analytics) Happy New Year!

I am leaving work shortly, to go and help my mom prepare for Oshogatsu - Japanese New Year celebration. This is when Japanese families gather to eat too much, drink a bit, and look forward to a new year clean start. For Japanese American's, this is a hangover from the traditions brought by our grandparents/great grandparents, etc... On the menu are salmon, sashimi, red beans and rice, and all the traditional squiggly bits of seafood and assorted vegetables that reflect the new year and seasonal availability.  Soon I will have burned hand from making mochi. Fresh mochi is a good thing! More on Mochi

2009 was a flat out suck year for most of us for work. But for this budo crud, one of the bright spots for me was to see everyone in class get better at some aspect of their practice. Even better was to see the improvements in teaching ability from those teaching. Small things perhaps, but rewarding.  Even more rewarding then the bottles of aged brown liquor I've been given by the guys in the dojo.

For all you guys in the TNBBC, thanks for hanging around. To everyone else reading this, get back to practice.