Two Turkey Dinners and a Lot of Thanks

Since I arrived in Tokyo in 2008 I have spent Thanksgiving Days doing what ever the normal work schedule called for. There just weren't any Americans among my colleagues on the Ichikawa side of the city to celebrate with. This year, however, we have a Serve Japan Worker here at JHQ from the US.

We decided a few weeks ago to do a Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday and invited our coworkers in the office. The ones who were in that day were mostly Japanese which always makes for lively conversation about American traditions, recipes, and finding the proper ingredients in Japan. We had fun and we were thankful together. I found when it was all finished and cleaned up that I am out of shape for cooking for a group!

Shortly after we had made the decision to do an Ichikawa Thanksgiving, we were invited to a dinner to be made in the main by American friends on the other side of Tokyo on Friday.  The choice of day was due to the children's school schedule.

The Thompsons, The Driscolls,
Christine and me

So we made what we pledged to contribute to dinner, and in the early afternoon started the hour and 10 minute trek by way of three different trains to our destination. We were 11 in number, and 5 of those were young men in the upper grades of secondary school. Two turkeys were prepared with all of the attendant side dishes and desserts in an effort to satisfy every one's appetite.  I think we might have come close. No question the adults had enough or a bit more than enough, but with boys that age any meal is at best a stop-gap measure.

I'm thankful for friends who think of you on special days like this, for lovely food prepared by loving people, for hospitality, for trains that run regularly and on time to the places you want to go, for relatively safe environments in the places I walk at most any time of day or night, good weather, fun conversations, and most of all for a Loving Heavenly Father who cares for us and about us.

Yokohama Quilt Week 2011

"Festival!"

I was able to visit this annual show sponsored by Patchwork Tsushin Magazine with my quilting Sensei again this year. I took photos of many of the pieces where photography was permitted.  You can view them in my Picasa Photo Gallery. The quickest way to get there from here is to click on one of the slide shows running to the right.

As always, from the first time I saw a quilt made by a Japanese artisan sometime in the 1990's, I was totally impressed by the tremendous amount of work that went into the individual works. Also the great artistic sense, the freedom to experiment, and tendency to intense detail. Take a look, and see if you don't agree.

Feeling Old?



Hanako

This is for several of my good friends had birthdays recently.  You know who you are. 

On my recent visit to the Kichijoji area I took a walk one day through Inokashira Park.  There is a zoo inside the park that I had heard about, and since I had never been to a zoo in Japan, I thought I'd take a look. This zoo is small and rather old fashioned. The star of the zoo is the lady pictured above, Hanako the Elephant.  I read some of the literature about the zoo and found that she was born in Thailand and came to the Ueno Zoo when she was two years old, in 1949. Well, guess what, she's the same age as I am! Looking at her I had very mixed feelings. 

You can see more pictures from Kitchijoji and Inokashira in the slide show running to the right. If you click on the slide it will take you to the album where you can see the pictures and captions individually.

I got a little surprise when I came upon the fellow in the picture here.  The sign said he and his mate were from America and that they are Capybara.  For some unknown reason I had a mental image of a capybara being about the size of a cat. Well I was wrong.  These guys were as big as hogs. Not really exuding much charm either.

Shopping in Kitchijoji

The window of a shop on a side street in Kitchijoji shows clothing from America and proudly states that they are made by foreigners. I was in this part of Tokyo recently and was really excited to see so many different shops that were new to me. It's a really popular place these days with young people, and it swirls with activity.

There were lots of import shops. I could find many things from boxes of Jello to my favorite Digestive Biscuits in one shop with mostly food and household items. At the quilt shop there were fabrics from the US and the UK as well as great stuff from Japan. Other shops had things from India, Nepal, Pakistan.

This shop was in the station and sold fabrics from France. The cute girl on the right was one of the staff and went out of her way to speak and try to understand me as I asked questions in Japanese when I could and English when my vocabulary failed me.  They had a basket of remnants and I came home with a piece of canvas weight fabric in narrow bright stripes.  It'll be a great summer bag.

This shop was pure Japanese, selling pickled daikon and other pickled vegetables.

I actually spent almost two days altogether looking around this town and walking between the shopping area and where I was staying in the next town, Mitaka.

It was different enough that I felt like I was really far from work and the day to day stresses and strains.  I came back to Ichikawa really refreshed.