Adventures in the Austentatious : Ep. 17 The Tha-nihon-ksgiving Feast

In a world filled with strange and mysterious things, it can be utterly baffling to discover an object of ardent and artful unoriginality. As such, and in no small part because, and with deep consideration to these facts, our hero will omit these details in my writing. Instead, I write of an amazing adventure of true transplantational trickery, where one day travels back in time yet one day ahead to a strange place far removed and a holiday in the lead. This is the holiday where, in the land of Halloween->Christmas, a land where already the jingling bells of the evergreen adorn the resplendently repellant rooms of mass material marketing, a land where a religivous festivous of fervent faith has never really openly celebrated the cessation of a womb by a supposed savior; in that very land the holiday of Thanksgiving leaped, sliced, diced, and wedged itself between the past and future shopping for a small group of expats...and former colonial overlords. Only in a place so far removed can a match made impossible by the far reaches of history overcome prejudice, persecution, and perpetual curiosity to exist. What will happen, question-mark-exclamation-point?!?!?!?!?!?! Read if you dare!

So, about a week ago I received an invite to attend a Thanksgiving day feast on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Normally I work on Saturdays, but because this on happened to be a national holiday, it was a free day for me. So, I accepted. And it really did seem appropriate to celebrate on that day, being that it was Labor Thanksgiving in Japan. The issue, of course, is what to cook. As I have no oven--and don't really have access to one--cooking a gigantic turkey seemed a poor idea. That, and meat was already to be covered, so it was more the prospect of bringing something that I could eat that was important. Eventually, I decided on a simple pasta dish (recipe now up in, "The Joys of Cooking Illiterately") which consisted of noodles, I-don't-know-but-still-vegetarian sauce, at-least-they're-cheap mushrooms, is-this-actually-a green pepper, and carrots...which are so common that they don't deserve the epigraph. Overall, I would argue that it turned out quite well.
//**quick note: when typing a blog and running a bath, make sure to keep your ears open. If a watched pot never boils, then an unobserved bath will always overflow.**//
Getting there turned out to be surprisingly easy, once I had established where I was going. Several messages had left out a single letter in the name of the town Tsuruse. In a shocking twist of time and space, that single letter shaved an hour off of my commute (yay). Still, with it being nearly December, the sun is setting earlier and earlier. While this will be good for the upcoming Ison comet (I hope) it means that I didn't get to see much as I rode the train. Still, all of the lights were very pretty.
I was met at the station by a training friend, who took me and one other person that she was meeting to her boyfriend's apartment. Now, I have seen other Leopalaces--the company that owns my apartment--around. However, it was still a bit of a shock to go to another apartment building, open the door...and find a nearly exact duplicate of my room. It had a familiar of home to it, yet at the same time every difference stood out in sharp contrast to everything else...definitely an interesting experience. Overall, I had a lot of fun fun. It was nice to meet new people--most of whom were, "across the pond" from America, and all of whom were really nice, good people--and it was fascinating to watch the dynamic of this new group of people. They were all older than me, most were in their late 20's, and it was cool to watch how they interacted with each other and how they thought about the world. Plus, there was quite a lot of good food, which is always a plus.

Food that I could eat.

All of the food. Note the chicken in the crock pot on the floor.

As a mild complaint, though, the host was older than everyone else, and I got the feeling that he was the glue that held this group of people together. That's not to say that they wouldn't have enjoyed each other without him, but he seemed to be the great organizer who planned things and who thought up things for people to do. Now, why did this bug me? Because, at least in college if not earlier, that's the sort of thing that I would do. Don't get me wrong, he was a nice guy, and it's good to have someone like that, but at the same time (as some of us learned when we left Upper School) if you don't branch out and share that responsibility of making things for people to do, then the group will fall apart when the glue departs. It's not that people want the glue to fall apart, but that to keep it together, they would have to redefine themselves in the larger group context, which can be really hard if it's not prepared for right. I learned that lesson once and, at least with the Willamette Improv Club, I think that I learned that lesson well.
Anyway, we took a break from being a mostly-passive audience to partake in one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions: sitting in a circle and each person saying what we're thankful for. And for the first time that I can remember, a certain Thanksgiving story did not crop up. Every person has a story like this, a tale from childhood that parents seem to bring up each and every year, the kind of story that just never seems to die. It happened back when I was really young. My family was at my grandparents' utterly amazing house for Thanksgiving. We were just sitting down, when we decided to go around the table and all say what we are thankful for. Everyone said something nice and inciteful. I am thankful for family. I am thankful that we are gathered here. I am thankful for my children, and grandchildren, etc. Anyway, we finally got to me, who clearly knew what everyone basically had on their mind, because I opened my mouth, and said...you're going to have to ask my family for this answer. I don't mind this story, it's definitely fun, but here in Japan we've other things to be thankful for. However, everyone there seemed to be thankful for very similar things. Having a job. Being in Japan. Being with awesome, fun people over here. Having amazingly supportive people back home. Having enough that we can complain. All of these things we have, and it's our choice of what to do with them. Also, it really is true that those of us in Japan are really in it together, and tend to face the same problems. In other words, with all of the people that we have over here, and all of the people that we have back home, none of us are really alone.
One final note: my company is not the only one to have English speakers in Konosu. One person was late last night, who was also from around Omiya. Guess where she's from? KONOSU. Guess which building she's in. Not mine, but a three-story Leopalace about a block away. She, my coworker, and I had been living within 100 meters of each other, and never known it. That, my friends, is serendipity.

So, I'm in a much better place now than I was a few weeks ago. I am more content with my life, and I'm in such a new and exciting place. Plus, in a little more than a month, I'm getting visitors! It will fill me with happiness and joy, and I cannot wait. All of this excitement has made my classes better. Speaking of classes...

In my 6th grade class with the spanking boys, the spanking one was a little embarrassed in class, while the spanked one was not. Considering what was bare last week, this was a switch.
I took one student through Shakespeare. It went really well, and the student did better than many native speakers I knew.
I teach a high school freshman aged class with one student. This week we learned about compliments. I asked him what he could compliment his mother about. He looked at me like I was asking the impossible. Some things never change.
There were three students in my discussion class this week. What did I learn? That it's really hard to get a discussion going when everyone keeps agreeing with each other. What else did I learn? When asked what they had learned from foreign dramas, the first response was so beautiful, so perfect, and so cheesy that I had to write it down:

Congrats America; you've become a rom com.

Well, this has been another exciting adventure in the austentatious. If you liked me, tell your friends; if you hated me, tell your enemies, and if you didn't care either way, then tell everybody.

PS: Pretty pictures of fall.