This past weekend was an experiment. We are having our Thanksgiving dinner on November 23rd (the day after Thanksgiving) over here, and I agreed to make pumpkin pies for it. Good and great. The only downside is that Japan doesn’t seem to have cans of pumpkin lining the grocery shelves this time of year like grocery stores in States do. Actually, they don’t have the orange vegetable that we would consider pumpkin at all. They have a smaller, denser, green gourd that they call pumpkin (it’s actually acorn squash). Ian managed to find a couple of real pumpkins at Costco in Fukuoka back in October and got them with making pumpkin pie in mind.
I researched online how to make a pumpkin pie from scratch. I stumbled across a WONDERFUL website that gave tons of helpful hints and tips….even for people living abroad! 
The greater part of my Saturday afternoon was dedicated to baking delicious pumpkin treats. After I steamed and peeled the skin from the pumpkin slices, I pureed it until it was completely smooth (below, right). Then I mixed in the other ingredients. The only other ingredients that I couldn’t find in Japan were evaporated milk and allspice. I was able to make my own evaporated milk on the stove and substituted additional cloves for the allspice. I also had to make my own pie crust…..which really wasn’t that big of a deal because I’ve never actually bought a pie crust…..I’ve always make my own!
After I put the pie in the oven, I had to figure out what to do with the leftover pie filling. One of the tips on the website was to throw it into the rice cooker for one cycle, and it would make a pumpkin pudding. Yum! 
I had just about a cup of pumpkin puree leftover, and another suggestion was to make pumpkin muffins by placing a marshmallow in muffin tins and covering it with the puree. The final thing I made was roasted pumpkin seeds. I saved the seeds from the pumpkin, mixed them up with olive oil, salt, pepper, a little garlic, and slid them in the oven for ten minutes. It was early evening before I finally finished everything, but we definitely had a feast of pumpkin treats that night! I was pleasantly surprised with the way the pie turned out (below, left). It was perfect! I do believe that from now on (even with the convenience of a can of pumpkin) I will make my Thanksgiving pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin.
Breaking news: In case you didn’t already see the Facebook pictures, Ian shaved his beard. (He had some fun with the process as shown below.) *gasp!* Yes, it’s true. He does it occasionally to start anew. He says that the hair starts to irritate his skin, so he shaves it all off to get rid of it. Let me tell you that after having the beard for so long and being used to seeing his beared face, it’s SO WEIRD to see him clean shaven! I used to think that I NEVER wanted him to grow a beard, but now I NEVER want him to shave it!! He looks like a little baby face boy without the beard! He agrees with me that his face just looks better with a beard. Plus, that’s his token trait in Japan….he’s Beardface! I showed some of my kids at lunch the other day a picture of clean shaven Ian, and they were in shock (and then started giggling). 
Plus our American friends have also done double takes. Melissa B. said that she barely recognized him right after he shaved. Luckily for Ian, his beard grows at an exponential rate. We were both laughing because only a few hours after he shaved, he already had 5 o’clock shadow.
This week at the JHS, I have had exactly ONE English class. That’s right. In three and a half days, I’ve had a total of ONE. Why, you ask? This weekend is the culture festival at the JHS, so the majority of the days’ class periods have been dedicated to practices and prep for that. It has certainly given me plenty of time for things that I usually put on the back burner: ie, blog-writing and TEFL course-doing. Thanks to the lack of classes this week, I actually finished my TEFL class, and now all I have to do is take the final test! It’s an online/open book test, and once I complete that (and hopefully score a 75% or above) I will be TEFL certified! Hurray! I’m planning to take that test either next Sunday or the following Sunday.
Speaking of the cultural festival……it’s a collection of skits, dances, speeches, and performances done mostly by the kids. However, all of the teachers are singing “We Are the World” together. The past couple of nights, Ian and I have been going to an hour long practice at night to practice and help others learn the words. Each teacher has his or her own section to solo, and Ian and I were paired together to have the longest solo part. This makes me both excited and terrified. I’m happy because they trust us enough to have such a large part, but at the same time I’m terrified to solo that much in front of the entire school and part of the town!! 
We’ll see how this goes……
On Wednesday at my ES I observed something rather funny. There were a couple of flies floating around at the lunch table, and the kids were trying to catch them. It wasn’t just willy-nilly catching, either. It was a very calculated Mr. Miyagi-fly-in-the-chopsticks sort of way. It literally reminded me of a cat stalking its prey. I watched one girl sneak up and pounce on a fly the way a cat would a bird, and SHE CAUGHT IT! She opened her hand and out flew a fly!! I couldn’t believe it! The only thing that could have made that better is if her last name was Miyagi. Alas! I thought that Mr. Miyagi with the chopsticks was a rarity, but apparently that’s a thing in Japan….catching flies. For the rest of the lunch period I watched one kid after another wait for a fly to land and then sneak up on it. I secretly referred to this action as “Mr. Miyagi-ing.”
That’s all for now! I’ll have plenty of time later to write another blog and definitely have more to tell….including about the COLD weather we now have in Kuma-gun. Ugh!! Winter is NOT welcomed here!! 
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