Thanksgiving & Christmas

Haha, my blog post titles are so boring! :D  They're so straightforward.  I have friends who become energized by being creative.  Creativity drains me.  There was a time when it didn't, but well, people change.  I still like writing though and wish I had more time to share stories and pictures.

Anyway...  I wasn't going to prepare a Thanksgiving meal this year, but it felt weird to not eat turkey and it seemed like such a shame to miss an opportunity to enjoy a meal with friends.

Last year, we had turkey at least 3 different times.  We ordered our pre-baked boneless turkey from Costco's online website in Japan and baked a tiny 4 and 1/2 pound one in our oven too.  We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving at the Ladies' Thanksgiving Party at Kabe Chapel, and with fellow American missionary families in Hiroshima and during the Ladies' English Class Christmas Party, both at our home.

This year, we were able to just go to Costco and buy one of their pre-baked boneless ones - yay!  We enjoyed a belated Thanksgiving dinner with two other couples on the Sunday following Thanksgiving.  For one couple, it was their first time at our new place and the first time we'd had them over since last Thanksgiving.  For the other couple, fairly new friends, it was their first time at our house and the two couples had never met.  Three of the four are Japanese who have spent over 10 years in America and are fairly Americanized.  One of the fun discussions that evening was when they were talking about things that caught them off guard about Japanese culture when they came back, aka "reverse culture shock".  The older couple shared how hard it was for them and their kids to fit back and their kids never did...  They didn't fit back in America either when they returned for college.  The older couple shared that their lives and the way that they related to many things, cultural miscommunication, etc all made more sense once they changed their thinking - they were really "foreign" missionaries in their "own" country, not just Japanese people who had returned "home".

Juhee & K-sensei; our Thanksgiving Dinner plate - mashed potatoes, turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, baked mac & cheese, and salad with Dr. Pepper; us and our American-Japanese missionary friends

And here's our Christmas tree!  People here have Christmas trees in their homes too, but they're all fake.  They're also of various sizes and colors, although I guess they tend to be on the smaller side and most are green, but you can get some that are white too.  Juhee's friends had been telling her about how they already put up their Christmas tree and so Juhee had been bugging me for a couple of weeks.  Every time Sungjae sees anything Christmas-y he says "It's Christmas!" :)  This year, for the first time, the kids decorated the tree on their own.

Sungjae loved putting the ribbons on the tree, mostly all in one area :/ he very proudly showed me how similar his decorated tree was to the tree on the box "They're the same!" ^^; Juhee enjoyed decorating the tree too and the two enjoyed decorating themselves with the ribbons too! ;P

After I took these two, I was going to take one more when Sungjae said "Wait! I'm going to go to the back!" And in a very big-boy like manner, he went and stood behind daddy and patiently waited for me to take a picture... My little baby's growing up!

Chronologically speaking, the Christmas photos should have come first, but that just seemed not right.  We had our Christmas tree up before we had our Thanksgiving meal and listened to Christmas music while eating it which was a bit weird, but.. it worked. :)

After being in a country where they put Halloween decorations on Christmas trees, Halloween things and Christmas things are sold together in shops, and Thanksgiving in between the two doesn't really exist, we're not too particular now on the how and when.


And here's a Japanese-y Christmas photo for you that I took the other day while driving (hence poor photo quality, sorry!).  I've seen many many Christmas lights both in the US and in the UK, but I haven't seen many with hearts and umbrellas!  The other side was pretty spectacular too.  Christmas lights around homes/apartments isn't very common here so it was surprising to see one that had so many (the other side was pretty extreme) and such Japanese-y ones too!

The lights around our house haven't gone up yet and may not go up this year.  Peter's still deciding.  TBC... :)