So at the beginning of the month, one of the English teachers I work with (who is a good friend of mine here - we're always recommending TV shows and music and whatnot to each other) at the junior high approached me about the Thanksgiving bulletin board I had set up. She loved looking at all the food pictures, and wondered if we could do a Thanksgiving dinner party at my house some weekend. "Sure!" I said, enthusiastically accepting the chance to celebrate Thanksgiving for the first time in 3 years (I missed it while studying abroad, too).
Little did I know how much work goes into these darn holiday dinners. Family, friends, anyone who has to go through this ordeal every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, whatever... you have my utmost respect.
Originally we were going to tell the whole office about it (that is 21 people, not including me, by the way), but especially at the thought of the women bringing their kids and basically having to make all this American food myself for such a big crowd, we decided to scratch that idea and go for a more intimate, friends only Thanksgiving. She invited her sister and 3 of her friends, and I invited 2 of my ALT friends. 8 people total... not too bad.
But being an insane perfectionist, I still freaked out over this for weeks. And also learned a few things about myself in the process... namely that I DO in fact pay attention when my family hosts this kind of big gathering type thing, as I apparently picked up a few party planning quirks from my step father and sister-in-law. From my sister I apparently picked up some of the the "Everything must be planned PERFECTLY" quirk, as I even had one of those "Put the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes at exactly 4:35" type timetables written up and was checking it every four seconds as I ran around the kitchen in a "everything must be done at the same time!" panic (This kind of freaked out my teacher friend, as she didn't know I'd take this so seriously).
Meanwhile, there were 8 people to feed, due to a misunderstanding I thought there would be 9, and so of course I made enough food for 18. This is the trait I picked up from my step dad. Thank God I persuaded my friends and teacher buddy to take home a bunch of leftovers (though I was still left with an inhumane amount of sweet potatoes to eat... but we'll get to that).
So let's talk about my first real Thanksgiving in Japan! It was a cold, November Saturday in Hokkaido...
I tried to go all out. Set up lots of chairs (and most people just sat on the floor anyway) and put up a few random fall themed decorations (that just kind of got in the way once the food part rolled around, but whatever). After all, no Thanksgiving table is complete without...
Ta da! A centerpiece! Complete with a fake, flickering, battery-powered tea light candle. Classy.
That pumpkin is real, and WILL be eaten one of these days. I just haven't done anything with it yet. I just got it after all. My neighbor, the vice principal, left it wedged in my mailbox last weekend since I mentioned how much I love pumpkin, and he apparently has many to spare. (I just wasn't home to accept it, so I had a fun surprise waiting for me when I got home. Not the first time that's happened - my past supervisor knows how much I love corn too, so I've come home to a big bag of corn hung on my doorknob before as well).
I could take a minute here to introduce one of my best Japanese friends: Daiso. I don't know how many times Daiso has saved me when I needed cheap, awesome stuff for any and all purposes. (Daiso is a chain of 100 yen shops, so it's basically the Japanese dollar store. Very handy when you're like me and need to make constant runs out for construction paper and glue sticks... or you need fall decorations or a big bowl to serve mashed potatoes in and don't want to spend more than a couple bucks total).
I persuaded a friend to make a dessert for me (she had originally volunteered to make something, after all), so I got ready for dessert time by prepping all the fixings for after-dinner coffee. My teacher told me it looked like I was getting ready for a business meeting, what with the tray and all...
At one point when the guests arrived someone took all these drink bottles over to the fridge to keep them cold. Yeah, buddy, that ain't happening. Now get outta the kitchen and go put those drinks in my alternate fridge, aka my bedroom. (Fun fact: If you went into my room that day you could see your breath, so it was perfect for storing drinks. It's cold here and I never use the heater in that room except like 10 minutes before I plan to go to bed.)
And now... WE DINE.
It's not pictured, but I had printed out a little menu and left it on the table for the guests to see before we set everything out for dinner. The menu was as follows:
Deviled Eggs
Main:
Chicken Drumsticks
Sides:
Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Chicken Gravy
Sweet Corn
Green Bean Casserole (Oooh, baby)
Sweet Potato Casserole
Jellied Cranberry Sauce
Turkey Stuffing
Bread Rolls (from an AMAZING restaurant in my friend's town)
Dessert:
Apple Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream
Pumpkin Muffins
As a certain American family might say, "Commence shoveling!" (I had to watch the "Mom, it' broken, mom!" episode online while doing my prep work... just to set the Thanksgiving mood.)
And at last... THIS. This is why I fretted over this for weeks and ran around like an idiot for 3 days. It's been 3 years, Thanksgiving, but at last we meet again. (After this was taken my friend with the bread rolls showed up, so unfortunately they're not in the picture. Just imagine them there to complete the image.)
Just to explain who did what, the teacher I work with brought her little toaster oven, a bunch of chicken drumsticks, and her and her sister thankfully took care of the meat for me (My local grocery store, for whatever reason, actually was selling Butterball turkeys this week... but the bird is bigger than any Japanese oven I've ever seen, so I don't know what they expect any of us to do with them. Hence we had chicken, since it's still a bird and close enough in my book). I made my friends handle bread and dessert... and I did the rest. I know it's not too hard to heat up a can of corn, slice up a can of cranberry sauce, or dump a bag of stovetop into boiling water, but this was my first time making casseroles, gravy from scratch, and getting a crap ton of stuff on the table all at the same time (in a tiny Japanese kitchen with two burners, a microwave, and an oven the size of a shoebox). It was quite the learning experience... but heck yeah man, I can do anything now.
But first, DESSERT. My friend made apple pie, we dumped ice cream on it, and everyone took home a muffin because we couldn't move (much less eat anything else) by this point (I know we didn't need the muffins, but we needed SOMETHING pumpkin on the table... and boy do I love that pumpkin bread recipe. So I made muffins in the middle of the night on Friday).
Don't forget the coffee.
And of course, pictures. Everyone was having fun taking pictures... and taking pictures of people taking pictures.
I'm not sure how enthused my teacher's friends were about all this odd American food I put before them, but everyone else seemed pretty excited about the whole experience, and I think everyone had fun in the end. I'm just glad it all came to a close without any problems (and Japanese people are AWESOME about being invited to parties, since the guests always leap all over the clean up and have everything washed and put away before the host can even blink. Yay!) And after everyone left my teacher friend and her sister stayed for another couple hours just to get in a good healthy dose of English conversation, which was a good way to wind down after the festivities (I like talking to them, they're cool people).
Now I can just sit back and relax for a little while in my clean house (I hate hate hate cleaning when having people over... but boy is this clean house nice).
Now to panic about my proficiency exam next weekend. Or not. I had a busy October, a busy November, and December's going to be a mess too... so I pretty much haven't even seriously thought about (or studied for) this test recently. Guess I'll be taking it again in July. Oh well! Some day, SOME DAY, I'll pass it. I swear. Hold me to that, if you must. But until that day...
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
