Sunday, November 23, 2008

Happy Japan Labor Thanksgiving Day!

Some of the holidays in Japan give me a chuckle. Like today's holiday. There isn't any celebration of it, you just have it as a day off. There's a bit of history to it, but all the Japanese I've asked have no idea about where it came from. Oh well, its a day off of school for Evan. And a day off for me to get up early to get him ready for school. :)
In light of the American Thanksgiving coming up, we celebrated a little earlier with some of our Japanese friends from church. They were really just wanting to schedule a home teaching visit, but we turned it into a Thanksgiving feast. hehehe
I forget how different Americans live compared to the Japanese, because when my friend came in to help out in the kitchen, as I was putting in a tray of croissants to be baked, she was astonished at how huge my oven was. Then she noticed how big the stove was in general. She turned around and the fridge, in its American huge-ness, had her at "SUGOII!" Then, as we were cleaning up after dinner, she noticed the dishwasher, and asked if she could look inside. I'm glad Mark did the dishes! She was blown away that there was not just one row of racks but two, and you had to stoop down to see the dishes all the way in the back. She called her husband in to look see and they admired how much cabinets and counter space there was. Honestly, I was amazed myself, when we first moved in, at the amount of cabinet and counter space we had!
While this whole event made me smile, apart of me feels guilty for living so well in Japan. And we pay almost nothing to live here too. While the rest of the country is making due with the small living space they have, we have the gall to complain about all the leaves we have to rake up on the 75 ft of lawn that we're in charge of around our house. I don't blame the Japanese for complaining about the American bases taking up their land. Thats why I feel like I need to play host to our Japanese friends often that they get to share in our abundance. Granted our home is still small compared to American standards, it's by far less cramped than most Japanese homes.
As for dinner, it was worth the hours of prep time. It was delicious. I don't think Thanksgiving is truely Thanksgiving without company to share it with. And to share it with company that rarely eats a traditional thanksgiving meal, made it even better. We got a smoked turkey this year, and it was SO good! Is like eating kaula pig, but turkey. And it only takes 1.5 hours to warm up, so it freed up my oven for other baked goodies like sweet potato souffle and fresh baked croissants. I'm thinking of heading out to the commissary tomorrow to pick up another yummy smoked turkey to just keep in my freezer for another day. hehehe
The pumkin pie I made turned out good. Although, can someone tell me why the pie cracks down the middle? Is it because it cools too quickly?

1 comment:

Edi said...

If we could only see all that we have through the eyes of people living in other countries - we'd (hopefully) be more grateful for what we have.