Thanksgiving Japan Style

Before I start, the picture on the left is a picture of the president pardoning a turkey. This is a Thanksgiving tradition. Every year, the president will "pardon" a turkey from being butchered for the Thanksgiving feast. This turkey will go on to live while all of his buddies end up on tables throughout the USA. The sad thing is these pardoned turkies will not live to see the next Thanksgiving. You see, these Thanksgiving turkies are engineered to be extremely "meaty". Their bones usually can't hold the weight of their muscle or fat for a whole year. OK, on with the Thanksgiving rehash:

To date, this is our second Thankgiving in Japan, leaving us just one more before we have one back home. Once I get home I will definitely be thankful for a BIG kitchen. Most poeple reading this or who have lived in Japan can attest that it is virtually impossible to cook a Thanksgiving dinner in a Japanese kitchen. Thank goodness for the giant deep fryers that they sell on base!!! That's right, this was the first year ever that we attempted to deep fry a turkey. Now, before everyone starts rolling their eyes thinking, 'How AMERICAN', I have 3 words: get over it. After all, Thanksgiving is purely an American holiday. Deep frying a turkey is not as bad for the heart as everyone is led to believe.

Long time readers might remember that last year around this time we had just moved into our home and the JCOM cable guys were over installing our cable. This apparently was an all day ordeal, so in typical Thanksgiving tradition, we invited those folks into our home to share our feast. In a matter of minutes they returned downstairs with empty plates, rubbing their tummies and thanking us profusely. Now, whether they actually ate my cooking or threw it out the window remains a mystery, but I digress.

This year was a little different. We've had some time to make friends and with that comes shared responsibilities of cooking the Thanksgiving feast. Our friends, Julie, Mike and their 2 boys, Sean and Aidan opened up there home to us for Turkey day. Julie really went all out. She made almost all the side dishes and desserts. Mike brought over the deep fryer and the turkey and I made ice cream, appetizers, cranberry sauce, and corn. (Julie's) Mike was tired from working the night shift but seemed eager to help (my) Mike with the turkey and gravy. Come to find out that most years he is the King of Turkey.

While Julie, (Julie's) Mike, and I danced around the (what I think was about) 10ft x 3ft kitchen preparing last minute things, (my) Mike put together the deep fryer, Sean and Josh ran around under our legs, screaming and wrestling with each other and the dog anxiously paced while watching the action. Pretty soon he got tired just from watching and flopped down on the couch in exhaustion.

Both Mike's went outside and deep fried the bird. It came out beautifully, with a flavorful crisp crust around it holding in all the juices of the meat. It only took about an hour to cook a 15 lb. turkey too. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in trying it. (Julie's) Mike was the turkey carving expert so (my) Mike was more than happy to give up the responsibility of cutting. I think we ended up sitting down at around 4:00PM to enjoy the spread. Amongst all of the great sides that Julie made, I think that her potato rolls rocked the most.

The 2 toddlers, Josh and Sean, lasted about 30 seconds at the dinner table and were soon shrieking and running circles around the table while the grown-ups attempted a conversation. All and all it was the closest thing to a big family Thanksgiving that I've had in a while. The "organized chaos" just added to the nostalgia or... perhaps it was the wine?

New Kitchen Posts

FYI, I added a couple new recipes to Nicki's Kitchen. One uses the sweet potatoes that we dug up the other day!

Tsunami, anyone?

Our friendly neighborhood warning signals went off a little over an hour ago with a very unfamiliar but bone-chilling message, "A tidal wave warning has been issued for the local area. Please take precautions if you are near the coastal area." (this message, of course, was preceded by a similar message in Japanese). For those of you that don't know, we're immediately across the street from the Tokyo Bay... pretty much right where it meets up with the Pacific Ocean.

If that wasn't enough to worry me, I started searching the local Navy base webpage and found absolutely zero information about the approaching tsunami. Went downstairs and turned on the AFN news station... nothing. Then I closed our storm windows and headed back upstairs to do some deductive reasoning.

#1 - What causes tsunami events? Earthquakes
#2 - What sources are available to find out about quakes? Read on...

So I checked the USGS Earthquake report website, and sure enough there was a quake (magnitude 7.8 - 8.1) about 1,000 miles north of Tokyo near some of the islands between Russia and Japan. Then I turned to the Japan Meteorological Agency webpage, which gave me an excellent visual of the "Tsunami Advisory" area of potential impact. A picture for your viewing pleasure:



Shortly thereafter, my telephone rang. Being around 9:30PM, I figured it was someone from base or nearby warning us about the tsunami. As it turns out, it was my dad... thanks Dad! He heard from my aunt (thanks, Mary Ann!) who heard about the quake and tsunami on the news. Funny that they are on the east coast of the United States and are getting better information than I am about this thing. Anyway, I learned from my dad that a tsunami of 16 inches hit Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido. Then he told me that a 6.5 aftershock (that's still a biggie) created a smaller tsunami that hit Hokkaido, this time at a height of 8 inches.

Nice.

Now, our advisory time is basically over and I'm staring at the boardwalk across the street observing absolutely nothing. Time to go to bed. Good night to all...

Stay dry!

Whirlwind Tour of Shizuoka Prefecture

On Saturday, we took a Navy-sponsored trip to Shizuoka Prefecture, which is located immediately south of Mt. Fuji and is known for it's production of green tea. Apparently, nearly 45% of the green tea in Japan comes from Shizuoka Prefecture. And we drank some. Free of charge.

The morning started for us at 4:00AM, with alarm clocks ringing in harmony on both sides of the bed. Nicki and I both set our alarms to make sure we got up on time. It worked. Shortly after, we woke Josh, ate a quick snack, grabbed our tickets and headed out towards base to catch our bus.

The Navy bus took us to Shinagawa Station, which is pretty much in the opposite direction that we were heading for the day, but for good reason. At Shinagawa, we hopped on the shinkansen (bullet train) and made our way to Shizuoka Prefecture. Our first stop from the train station (where we caught another bus)... Kakegawa Castle. The castle, like many in Japan, is a rebuilt version of the original, which was destroyed during an earthquake a while back. The castle was beautiful from the outside, but inside it was pretty much empty except for a few statues and items that date back a few hundred years. This isn't the first castle that I've visited here in Japan, but every time I see one I think to myself, "why don't the curators put stuff inside these things that reflect the furniture, clothing, and art of the historical era?". Such was my feeling at Kakegawa Castle, too.

After visiting the castle for just over an hour, we marched back to the bus and made our way to lunch... at a rest stop. Then we boarded the bus and made our way to a fish market. Why we went to the fish market after lunch, instead of during lunch, is beyond my understanding. But it was my first fish market in Japan and it just seemed like a tourist trap the way that it was set up. I'd really like to see tsukiji fish market in Tokyo one day, because I hear that it is one of the largest in the world and an amazing spectacle. But I did get some pretty fun shots at the touristy fish market, so I had no real complaints. Check out this fish head!!!

After about 45 minutes at the fish market, we got back on the bus and made our way to the local Sapporo Factory and Brewery, where we went on a tour of the factory and had about a half hour to enjoy "all you can drink" beer, compliments of Sapporo. I'm not a huge fan of Sapporo beer from a can, but I have to admit that having freshly brewed Sapporo straight from the mothership was a tasty treat.

When our 30 minutes of tasting were up, we boarded the bus yet again and started our way back home. We stopped for dinner at a different rest stop and got back to Yokosuka around 9:00PM. Josh was a trooper for most of the trip, but around bedtime he became quite vocal about "I not feel good", which in that instance was a Josh'ism for being tired.

The tour was fun, but it could have been spread out over the weekend, or we could have changed it to allow more time at each destination along the way. But hey, it was a chance to get out and see a new part of Japan, so it was worth it.

All of our pictures are up in the Gallery, dated 11/14/2006.

It's Harvest Time Again

If you're a long-time reader of The Japan Years, you may recall a trip we took back in March with the Kakimoto family to pick strawberries at a nearby farm. Hide-san is a coworker of mine and he and his family have taught us a lot about some of the day to day fun things that happen in Japan. This past weekend, we were again invited by the Kakimoto family to join them for a morning of sweet potato harvesting at the same farm where we went strawberry picking just a few months earlier.

In a nutshell, we paid our admission fee (800 yen for the family), received a potato collection bag, and began digging as many sweet potatoes as we could find. Within under an hour, our bag was full and heavy - and all of us were a little bit dirty but also very happy to have had the experience. The picture of the day goes to Josh... who found a sweet potato half the size of his head. The rest of our photos are in our Gallery: