Wednesday was Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan. It’s more like Labor Day and less like our Thanksgiving. They didn’t exactly have Pilgrims and Indians sharing a feast way back when in Japan. All of the ALTs in our area got together for Thanksgiving dinner at Krista’s house. She ordered a turkey online, and Ian built a smoker to smoke it. He woke up at 4:30AM to put it on and let it cook the rest of the day. I told Ian to try to be quiet while he prepared it so that I could sleep. That would have worked if our house was bigger. However, I heard every move he made. I heard him shuffling around in the kitchen, thump-thump-thump-thump as he walked around with his shoes on, and the door slam again and again as he went in and our. Around 5:30AM he came in and told me that the grate broke, so he had to rig one up with a coat hanger. When the store opened, he bought a new one. He also told me about a pesky little cat that kept coming back. I can’t say that I blame the cat because it smelled wonderfully outside, but the darn cat chewed up one of our kitchen towels because it smelled like delicious turkey! Grrrrr….
Ian periodically came back to bed to warm up before going back outside to check on the turkey. It was like snuggling with smoked meat. 
The smoke permeated his clothes, and I don’t think that smell is going away anytime soon! Despite the fact of being awake and asleep on and off all morning, we finally crawled out of our warm bed around 9:30AM. Since I was supposed to bring biscuits and gravy for the potatoes, I decided to have a trial run that morning. Plus, Ian requested that I make breakfast since he had been up since 4:30AM and was “starving,” so I made an American breakfast of biscuits, gravy, and fried eggs. We laid around the rest of the morning as Ian went in and out of the house checking on the turkey.
Ian told our friends that if anyone was interested they could come over and hang out at our house while he smoked the turkey (I think the offer was more directed at the guys in our group 
Only David and Krista showed up. David just got his motorcycle license and bought a motorcycle over here, so Ian was tickled to see and talk about motorcycles with David. They watched some TV while I walked to the grocery to get more flour, milk, and butter so I could make more biscuits. We counted and thought that about sixteen people were coming to Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t exactly sure how much to make. I made a triple batch of biscuits and a double batch of gravy. It was a ridiculous amount of food! I had a plate of biscuits piled high and a VERY full bowl of gravy that I was worried any slight bump in the road would send oozing over the side. When Ian pulled the turkey off the smoker, I was AMAZED. That was the BEST looking turkey, and I was so incredibly proud of him for cooking it. We had our hands full carting stuff over to Krista’s house.
I know I’ve said it before, but I love our friends. We have an amazing group here in Kuma-gun. Everyone brought a dish, and we had all of the traditional feasting items: turkey, dressing, steamed veggies, fruit salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, oreo truffles, chocolate walnut pie, cream cheese fruit fluff, and so much more! Brian made egg nog, and Rebeca brought a traditional Guatemalan fruit punch. We ate…and ate….and ate, and whenever we were completely full, we ate again. Everyone there was American except for four people. Michael is from South Africa, Ana from Portugal, Amanda is from Australia, and Yuusuke is from Japan. We showed them what Thanksgiving is all about….EATING! We were all stuffed silly, but it didn’t keep us from continuing to shovel in forkful after forkful. 
We jokingly said what we were thankful for, and I think the best response was from one of my friends: “I’m thankful to the Japanese government for spending an exorbitant amount of money to bring us here to not do a lot of work.” We all agreed to that one.
After dinner, we celebrated David’s birthday. Ana had bought him a cake, and we sang happy birthday. The rest of the night, we talked and talked and talked. It was too large of a group to have individual conversations, so we formed little groups and floated between. Ana mentioned that she needed to start writing again. I told her that I was a creative writing major, and that got us talking. We decided that we are going to start a writing workshop for our area. Anyone who wanted to could join. Yay! I haven’t written anything in a LONG time, so this will be a good thing for me. We also talked about Christmas plans. A couple of people are going home, and others will be traveling around Asia. Ian and I agreed to host a Christmas party on Christmas Eve for anyone who didn’t have plans. We’re going to have a very traditional Christmas party….and by that I mean it’s going to be a PIZZA PARTY! Pizza here is NOT like pizza at home, so if you want good American pizza, you have to make it yourself. We had a pizza party in October, and it was a wild success. Ian made homemade crust, we bought sauce and provided all kinds of normal toppings (NOT corn or shrimp), and topped it with loads of cheese (unlike Japanese pizza). We thought that since Christmas won’t be normal this year, we might as well do something not normal.
The party broke up around 9PM. There were still plenty of leftovers, so everyone divided them up. I regretted making a double batch of gravy. We now have a TON of leftover gravy sitting in our refrigerator.
And that, my friends, was how we celebrated Thanksgiving in Japan!
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