Thanksgiving in Kameoka

Thanksgiving in Kameoka

No, I didn’t find a turkey in Japan, although I did see some tantalizing ads on CNN for frozen turkeys. But I didn’t get a chance to write down the name of the store that carried the turkeys, and the one whole chicken Sean found in a store was one hundred dollars, so we passed it up. That’s right, one hundred bucks. I’m not sure why things that are whole are more expensive here than things that are cut up, but they are, and Japanese grocery stores don’t carry whole anything except whole fish, which are plentiful. (You’ll note the contrast between Japan and China: look at the later posts on China in this blog to see photos of chickens still sporting their feet, hanging in a very modern grocery store in Beijing.) It has not been too many years since food was a lot more local, both in Japan and in the US, and since Kyoto is not on the water the only fish people used to eat was dried, smoked, or otherwise preserved fish. Persimmons still hang from the trees here in Kameoka in November, looking like big, slightly flattened orange tomatoes, although the birds are now feasting on what has not been harvested. Oddly enough the fruit remains even when the leaves fall. (I need to learn how to use persimmons, which show up in both American and English Victorian literature and cookbooks.)

But – chicken in pieces is easy to find, and so Rose (Natalia’s visiting mom) and I went food shopping Wednesday night before Thanksgiving to get chicken, celery, onions, butter, and whatever else we could find to create a Thanksgiving dinner. All of the margarine is tub style, but there is excellent Hokkaido butter (Hokkaido being the northern region of Japan and home to its beef, lamb, and dairy production). Rose has a deft hand with piecrust and had also hauled with her to Japan canned pumpkin, evaporated milk, pumpkin pie spice, poultry seasoning, and cranberry sauce. I had bought flour, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla, milk, bread, more celery and onion, and apples. I even made chicken broth with chicken necks for the stuffing, but it disappeared in the dishwashing process and never made it into the dressing. That night we (Rose, mostly) made three pies, adding to the one I had already improvised with the ingredients I had, two pumpkin and an apple pie with a latticed crust (Rose is a fiber artist and wove the crust!). We went to bed at almost 2 a.m. Rui, our liaison, had to visit the house a few days earlier to help figure out how to use the combination microwave/range/oven, which is so advanced in its choices that its Japanese directions were way beyond me.

All the students kicked in a contribution of yen and food, including creamed corn, Kentucky fried chicken, a huge dishpan of salad (including precious red and yellow peppers), a giant bowl of fresh fruit (including delicious pineapple), very smart-looking appetizer sandwiches, onigiri (triangular rice cakes), twice-baked potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, Rui, our liaison, and her mother brought a big silver platter of edamame (soybeans) and chicken drumsticks, as well as a beautiful bouquet of roses in four colors – yellow, white, pink, and deep red. People also brought things to drink, like pineapple soda and Calpis, which tastes something like Fresca or that old grapefruit soda Wink (the Sassy One, from Canada Dry). All in all about 25 people attended, including former China/Japan student Sara Jane (her roommate Leen is at Canterbury Christ Church with my son Garrett), Valeria and Rob, current NCC exchange students at Kyoto Gakuen, three former NCC exchange students visiting Valeria from various schools, and some Japanese students who would like to attend an exchange at NCC in the future.