Thanksgiving

Because they couldn’t book a room on the actual day of Thanksgiving, AKP threw a Thanksgiving party this Thursday instead. It was a potluck, but AKP provided the turkey and drinks, and a group of students organized the decorating and entertainment. For the occasion, Mom sent me the recipe for one of my favourite Thanksgiving dishes: roasted chestnut dressing. I managed to pull it off fairly well using fresh rosemary from my host mother’s garden, but I accidentally didn’t add chicken broth, which made the texture a little dry. I think that the most amusing thing about the party itself was the wide variety of dishes that people brought. There was, of course, a great deal of Japanese food, such as sushi and croquettes, but also some other western stuff, like mashed potatoes and rice crispies treats. One of my favourite additions was the batch of spam musubi that some of the students from Hawaii made. I was able, in addition to stuffing myself, to meet some of my friends’ host families, including my friend’s host father, who frequents a teahouse in Gion, and gave me several name cards of Gion maiko-san, which are incredibly beautiful and amusingly uninformative. They only actually include the maiko’s first name (which is a sort of ‘stage name’ that they come up with when they become maiko) and the district that she is from, but are printed with beautiful patterns, which change depending on the season. These ones were also stickers, though I can’t say I know why.