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.

An Air of Sadness

Upon my return from a short four days holiday on the other side of Tokyo I immediately learned of the passing of Ruth Ayling in the UK.  It was her illness that precipitated my resuming full time care of the OMF Headquarters Ichikawa Guest Home. She and her husband, Gareth were in charge from autumn 2002 till spring this year and in that span of time they broadened and deepened their network of friends and proteges.  I was fortunate to have contact with them and to give them a day off every week and to meet with Ruth for a weekly time of sorting myself out and prayer together.

She is greatly missed by her husband, Gareth and her children and grandchildren, and also by many many more to whom she showed kindness, consideration, generosity, interest. With whom she shared many meals, letters, calls, visits and prayers. She is an excellent example of a Godly woman. We could all learn something from her life. 

Till we meet again in Glory.

La France

It just occurred to me that when I was growing up my mother used a laundry product called La France. I think it was "bluing." You know, to make your whites look whiter?  Am I speaking to people with blank looks on their faces and no idea what I'm talking about this time?

Why I thought of La France is that there is something in Japan that is called La France (ra furansu). It is a fruit that is in the stores now. For all the world it looks like a Bartlet Pear until you grasp the size of it. It is enormous!



In the picture to the left is a La France with a ruler in front showing it to be at least 12 cm long. (Are you out there Ed?)  Beside it is a 500 ml carton of La France drink (1% real fruit juice!) It took me a while to figure all of this out a few years back because Japanese people tend to think if something is written in katakana - the alphabet for foreign words - it should follow that foreigners should know what it means.

By the way, the La France is like a Bartlett Pear on the inside too, with the same taste and texture.

While we're on the subject of food, I found this to be amusing. On the left we have a small package of potato salad.  In Japan you're likely to find carrot, cucumber and a bit of whole kernel corn in it, but it tastes pretty good. When I first arrived in 1999 my first taste of it was in a package of mixed sandwiches between two pieces of white bread at an after church lunch

Here we have the empty plastic tray with the lettuce leaves printed on it. I often tell people at home that almost everything is done in Japan with an eye toward aesthetics. So, rather than putting in real lettuce leaves that would just go limp and nasty in a day and everyone would throw away anyway, they print the leaves on the tray. It makes the potato salad look more attractive without the waste.

Kinchaku Project

Kinchaku are items well known to Japanese people.  They are cloth bags with a drawstring top. They come in many sizes, and the fabrics and embellishments make them anything from utilitarian to quite beautiful. Small ones are used inside purses to hold small items.  Medium sized ones, like the one at the right, can hold the mouse and power cord for my computer. Larger ones are commonly used by school children to carry shoes or books. In fact a child starting school should have a set of bags to carry all the things they need each day. Sometimes mother makes the set and it all matches and reflects the likes of the child. Sometimes they are purchased at school bazaars, or maybe grandma makes or buys the set. There are even books you can buy that show the proper sizes and how to make each one.

The one in the photo here is made from a traditional Japanese fabric called Shibori which is the ancient Japanese version of tie dying. The process gives the fabric both design and texture. Great care was taken with this one to make it aesthetically pleasing as well as useful.

After the earthquake in March my quilting teacher was thinking about practical ways to help the people in the Tohoku area of Japan where the Earthquake was centered and the Tsunami hit and where the Fukushima Power Plant was in limbo. She thought about people who had lost everything and depended on others to supply their needs.  She heard about all kinds of projects providing food, water and clothing and how difficult it was to match the supply with the current need. She thought about a Japanese woman sitting in an evacuation center with clothes and bedding that were unfamiliar to her, among family (if she were so fortunate) and neighbors who were equally in need and dependant on others.  If someone gave this woman some small thing for herself, she wouldn't have anywhere to put it.  She could use a kinchaku if she had one. From these thoughts came the Kinchaku Project. 

Friends and students were asked to make a few kinchaku each to send to Tohoku.  It didn't take long till the finished bags started pouring in.  The response was almost overwhelming. Everyone wanted to help and contribute.  When it came time to decide how to get the bags to the people who could use them, a Japanese quilting magazine, Patchwork Tsushin, said they would like to help. In late spring they shipped 1000 kinchaku north.  Each package of 20 contained  message from the makers expressing their desire to do something useful and hoping that the bags would be of use. Several months later another shipment of 500 bags was sent off.  Last week when I attended my quilting class, the students packed up 400 more kinchaku to send.

I love being part of the group doing something useful. I like the care that went into deciding what to do. I love the way Japanese people care for each other. I like the cooperation between teacher, student and community services.

Hats off to Kuraishi sensei, her students and friends and Patchwork Tsushin magazine for making this all work.