Feast

Working on a Japanese calendar means no time off for Thanksgiving, so our celebrating was pushed back to Saturday.  We were lucky enough to have Japanese labor day on Friday, so we did get a little extra time off.  In case you were not aware, I am not the only American living in Funehiki, Japan.  There are 11 of us, and a few of those 11 are really good planners.  We all love Thanksgiving, so preparation for the day began at least a month in advance, if not earlier.  Everyone had their own assignments for the big day, special shopping trips were made to get foreign ingredients (including a 3 hour drive to Costco for the turkeys).  I got off relatively easy in the preparation department, being responsible for beverages (I made some great punch) and assisting with turkey prep.  This being the case, I ended up running errands and helping out a little bit with the sweet potato and green bean casseroles too. 

Celeste, me, Jay, and Eric

Earlier in the week I was a little bit worried about how Thanksgiving could be Thanksgiving if I wasn’t with my family, but I fears were assuaged when the day actually arrived.  It turns out, I was with my family for Thanksgiving, just not the family I had been thinking of.  I’m thankful for the family I have here.  They have been a great support for me the past few months, and I can’t imagine what life would be like here without them. 

The prep work for the meal almost felt like a game to me.  Could I make a Funehiki Thanksgiving as amazing as an Ohio Thanksgiving?  The added responsibility was exciting.  We had to make Thanksgiving happen; we couldn’t rely on mom to make sure the turkey didn’t dry out.  And that sense of ownership over the day made the celebration that much more rewarding. 

The Spread

Meal time was set for 3:30, which meant we didn’t actually sit down till after 4.  There were 11 of us plus maybe eight extra friends crammed around three tables set end to end in a kitchen and living room.  And the tables were covered with food.  I don’t know of any traditional dish we were missing.  Garlic mashed potatoes, three turkeys, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, two sweet potato casseroles, two green bean casseroles, we had it all.  I’m glad we were able to have some of our Japanese friends over to celebrate the day.  In my last post I lamented the difficulties of explaining the significance of traditions, and I really think the best way to teach a tradition is to let the person in on it.  I don’t know how much of the significance of the day actually transferred, but I think they learned more from the experience than they could have from me telling them about it. 

After we had all eaten so much that we could hardly move, the tv came on with some turkey day football.  (Yes, I can watch football here!  And it’s even legal!  Thanks to nfl.com and my buddy Jay, we haven’t had to miss any of this year’s installment of “False Hope - The Eternal Letdown,” aka the Buffalo Bills.)  Once we got to the end of the first game, some of us found room for pie.  Oh, the pies.  I love living with people that bake. 

Leftovers are always a part of Thanksgiving, but even more so when you have a whole turkey untouched at the end of the feast.  So we’ve all been extending the feast, I think I’ve got enough in my fridge for just one more meal though, better make it count!  

(Sorry for the tardiness of this post.  Leave it to me to post about Thanksgiving on Christmas Day.  Well, New Year's is coming up, maybe it's time to make a resolution about this blog.  Also, thanks to Celeste and Ashley for photos!)

We Are Weird

Three months in Japan; routines are becoming established; some of the initial surprise and shock at new things has become dampened; I’m starting to get used to life here.  Cars on the left side of the street?  Of course!  Chopsticks and rice at every meal?  Naturally.  Being unable to communicate with most of the world around me?  Has it ever been otherwise?

But new things do still happen here from time to time, I guess.  Thanksgiving was last week.  Although I’m fairly familiar with the traditions surrounding this holiday, this was the first year I’ve had to celebrate Turkey Day away from my family.

As my alarm buzzed me awake Thursday morning all I could think about was how horrible it was to have to work on Thanksgiving.  But I managed.  At school I was wishing every kid I saw “Happy Thanksgiving!”  Most just passed by with a confused smile on their face, but a few stopped and asked for an explanation.  As I struggled to express the traditions in simple English I was brought back to an experience I had in high school Spanish class.  Each year we would study cultural traditions particular to certain Spanish-speaking countries – Los Dias de Los Muertos (The Days of the Dead) stood out in particular.  Their traditions seemed so strange to me, but at the same time I could see how important they were to the people celebrating them.  I knew in class that I would learn plenty about what their traditions were, but getting an understanding of the feelings accompanying the traditions or why they were so important . . . that was impossible.  And however much I could acknowledge that the traditions had profound importance for someone, somewhere, they could never be more than cultural oddities to me. 

So when I started explaining Thanksgiving to students I strongly identified with the opposite side of my situation in high school.  Sure, I could tell students about turkey and football and family and being thankful, but I couldn’t tell them about sitting around a table in Enon, OH, reuniting with family, joking about Erin making an extra green bean casserole sans mushrooms just to accommodate my preferences, falling asleep halfway through the Cowboys game, waking up to pie . . . .  No matter how much I told them about our traditions, there’s no way I could communicate all that to them.

But I guess this all goes along with being a foreigner.  Most of my time here I’ve been stuck noticing all sorts of weird things Japanese people do that are nonetheless essential to their way of life.  This Thanksgiving made me pause and consider some of the weird things that Americans do that are essential to our way of life.   Why do we do the things we do?  Why do we relate and communicate with people in a particular way?  It sure isn’t because one way is more effective or efficient than the other.  At times I’m confused by the Japanese way of doing things because there seems to be a much more efficient way of getting the job done, but sometimes efficiency isn’t the goal.  Maybe that’s some of my American-ness coming through; we tend to place value on brevity and directness, while the Japanese way often seems to prefer indirectness and patience.  But even Americans do not always do things the most efficient way.  I can’t help but paraphrase the words of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, “How did we start doing the things we do?  I don’t know.  But it's a traditions, and it's our traditions that tell us who we are.”  (This part in the video starts at 2:10)
 

 Yes, we are all weird, we do things that don’t seem to make sense or have a reason, but that is what makes us, us.