Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

For us in Japan, it is a normal Thursday. Nothing planned in the way of a feast and no turkeys in sight. A couple of days ago Japan celebrated Labor Thanksgiving Day which has different connotations but schools and businesses did get to take the day off. It is no where near the family, feasting day that Thanksgiving is in America.

For many years our family was invited to Marlene's house for Thanksgiving and she always had a turkey ordered from Tokyo. Marlene's family, our family and another family with American connections would gather on the Sunday closest to Thanksgiving Day and have a traditional Thanksgiving feast. I'd bring green beans and a salad and maybe an apple pie, the other family would bring condiments like cranberry sauce, black olives and pickles (the husband always had a business trip to the States around this time of year) and Marlene would roast a turkey, make mashed potatoes and bake a pumpkin pie. We all spoke a combination of Japanese and English and had a big "family" day. Poor Marlene! She has always been stuck with the big job of roasting the turkey because she is the only one of us that has an American sized oven that the turkey can fit into! The rest of us bake in ovens that hold 9 cookies at a time.

Another Thanksgiving I remember before I ever met Marlene, was when a couple foreign families decided to celebrate together and one lady, Helen, ordered a turkey. I think what happened was when she went to roast it she found it wouldn't fit in her oven. Disaster approaching! We called Mrs. Furui because I knew she had an large German oven from her days of living in Germany.

"Mrs. Furui! We are trying to roast a turkey but it won't fit in the oven. Could we use your oven today? Of course please join our Thanksgiving party!"

Mrs. Furui was happy to help us but she had plans for part of the day. She suggested that whoever was roasting the turkey could come over and camp out at her house even if she, herself, wouldn't be home.

Blond Helen went over to Mrs. Furui's and spent the day alone roasting the turkey. No problems until MR. Furui suddenly came home in the middle of the day and found this blond stranger standing in his kitchen! He backed out of there very quickly and pondered whether he'd stumbled into the wrong house! As I recall, thanks to the Furui's, it was a lovely Thanksgiving day with lots of laughter.

As I said, this year Tetsu and I are having a quiet weekend. Marlene of course invited us again, but she has a lot of company this year and Thanksgiving doesn't mean a whole lot to Tetsu anyway. Should I figure out how to bake a pumpkin pie? I think my oven can handle that...