Our First Thanksgiving in Japan

With the weather sunny and still reasonably warm (50-60s Fahrenheit) and without the Thanksgiving/Black Friday marketing, it didn't feel like late November. It was easy to forget about Thanksgiving. Unlike Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving is unknown in Japan. People have probably heard about it, but most don't quite know what it is. I did see one poster advertising "Black Friday Sale: 10% off!" I found this quaint and understated. I also saw four frozen turkeys sitting by themselves in a freezer at a local supermarket that sells a lot of international foods. E asked me if they were real turkeys. I responded, yes, they are real but frozen. She asked permission to touch them, as if at a petting zoo. That was the extent of our Thanksgiving. 

When I was growing up, my parents bought and cooked a turkey every Thanksgiving. We never had any other family members around to celebrate, so it was just three of us eating an obligatory turkey. There was nothing else to do when we were all home and there were turkeys sold everywhere. Every year, my dad brought home the annual turkey recipe circulating at work. One year, it called for injecting, as well as basking, the turkey with honey, seasoning and butter. Honestly, it all tasted the same. After I left for college, my parents stopped making turkey because they were now down to two people and realized that they didn't even like it very much. This started a Thanksgiving tradition, for them and for me, of eating other things, things that we would rather eat. In the last few years, our family has had roast chickens, duck l'orange, and rib roast. Still, once ever few years, someone will wonder if we should once again try our hand at turkey, and we will eat turkey. 

Another tradition my husband and I began was running a race - The Drumstick Dash! The Turkey Trot! - on Thanksgiving morning. I loved this, working up an appetite, enjoying the autumn foliage outdoors, and the running in the cold. No race this year, but we are both training for a half marathon to take place in January, so there was still a lot of running. In Tokyo right now, the temperatures are brisk but not cold (not by upper Midwest standards), and the autumn foliage is peaking. The views along my running route:

Gingko trees. This one was taken a few weeks ago, when the leaves were just beginning to turn.

Along with this Thanksgiving update is a toilet training update. M is now toilet trained with the exception of nights - she still wears a diaper overnight. We still have to watch her carefully and take her to the toilet at regular intervals. She can go without the toilet as long as an hour and a half, and our accident average is now one every few days. Things are not bad. Our only setback, surprisingly, has been daycare. I plan to write a post about daycare, so I will talk more about it there. 

Lastly, if you are interested in comparing different health care systems and service, you can read about it in my husband's blog. He saw how much fun I was having writing my blog and decided to start his own. His blog focuses on the systemic, operational, and cultural differences between Japanese and American medical care from a physician's perspective. As a Japanese person educated and trained in the U.S., he has found working for a Japanese hospital a novel and interesting experience. 

With that, I leave you with this autumn sunset as seen from our balcony. 

My Favorite Japanese Condiments

I have always enjoyed cooking, especially in the winter. It warmed up the apartment on cold Chicago (or even colder Minnesota) days. With my dog at my feet, ingredients on the table, and a lineup of podcasts ready to play, it was one of my greatest pleasures. Even after kids, when the pressure increased to churn out balanced meals one after another, I still liked it - maybe not all the time, but most of the time, yes. 

This changed when we moved to Japan. It was mostly because of the different ingredients available. Technically, you can find anything in a city like Tokyo. However, some things became hard to find and others more expensive. A box of Morton's Kosher salt, for example, cost $8 USD here compared to $3 in the U.S. And I have to go to a specialty store some distance away from my apartment. Beans (garbanzo, kidney, canellini, black), lentils, grains, and cheese were all major components of our diet that became similarly inaccessible. And since groceries generally cost more in Japan, I was spending more and buying less. After the novelty wore off, the food shopping started feeling like a chore. Is this expensive? Is it organic? Is it a grapefruit? It was all a bit disorienting. 

These days, I feel like I am starting to get back into the groove of cooking again. I have accepted that the grocery bill will be double to what it was before and that there will be very few organic options. I have also learned how to better cook with more accessible Japanese ingredients. So here are five condiments/sauces that have made cooking in Japan easier and more delicious. 

1. Mentsuyu

Mentsuyu is a pre-combined mixture of soy sauce, sake, mirin, dashi broth, and bonito. It is a little sweet, a little tangy, salty, and very umami. It is most commonly used as dipping sauce for soba, somen, and other types of noodles. Mentsuyu is my most used condiment because the flavors are already so well-balanced and therefore versatile. You can use it in a stir fry, as a broth, or for a marinade. I love using Mentsuyu with pan fried Japanese vegetables like eggplant, Shishito pepper, Manganji pepper, and lotus root. I simply soak the pan fried vegetable in a shallow bowl of mentsuyu and chill it in the refrigerator. Sometimes I add a dash of rice wine vinegar. 

2. Shichimi Togarashi

Shichimi Togarashi translates into "seven spice pepper." It is made of sansho pepper (an aromatic, mild, peppercorny pepper native to Japan), red pepper, ginger, seaweed, and sesame seeds. This is a ubiquitous condiment used on ramen, udon, soba, and rice. It is a great topping for a boring dish. We eat a lot of cauliflower, usually just sautéed with salt and sugar. Sometimes, I sprinkle shichimi togarashi on the finished product to liven it up. Despite its red color, it is mild enough that my four year old won't mind a little bit. 

3. Youki Chicken Stock Granules

Youki is the brand name for these chicken stock granules. They are akin to chicken bouillon. Their dried granule form makes them convenient to use, and I use them most frequently in sauces, soups, and stews. It adds an underlying umami flavor and enhances the existing flavors. 

4. Ponzu 

Ponzu is soy sauce infused with citrus flavors, primarily yuzu. The citrus gives the sauce a distinctively acidic taste. Ponzu is great with tofu and seafood. An easy side dish is good quality tofu, chilled and plated with thinly sliced scallions, bonito flakes, and ponzu. Ponzu is also great as an ingredient for marinades and dressings. 

5. Furikake

Furikake is a generic term for a dried seasoning mixture that is sprinkled on rice. There are different flavors of furikake, from wasabi to salmon to egg. The most popular variety is probably noritama, which is nori (seaweed) and tamago (egg) flavored. Kids love this stuff. My kids are not picky eaters, but when there is any hesitation, furikake is like magic dust. Just a little sprinkle makes everything go down. It is also used in making onigiri, rice balls. Although I think furikake is usually used with rice, I use it on vegetables to add a little more color and flavor. 

Kid-themed variety packs. The different colors represent different flavors. For instance, the green is vegetable furikake. 

All five of these condiments are available in the U.S. but did not make it into my kitchen as staples until we moved to Japan. If you are curious about trying any of these, Japanese Cooking 101 and Just One Cookbook. 

Potty Training

Yesterday was the first day of M's potty training. E was potty trained when she turned two, and we figured we would do the same for M. To tell you the truth, we have been dragging our feet since M's birthday a couple of weeks ago. 

It took us three days to potty train E and a week to fully potty train her (meaning she could be awake without a diaper as well as sleep without one). We read the book Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki and followed her guidelines, which aim to potty train kids quickly rather than gradually. It worked for us. Things progressed just as the book described. Even now, it seems amazing that we were so lucky with E. We chalked it up to a combination of beginner's luck and E's personality. Naturally, we reasoned that it would be hard to get lucky twice. And the task ahead seemed to become more and more overwhelming in our minds. 

Another reason is outside pressure. For a few months now, both M's daycare and her grandparents have been attempting to potty train M. When she said "poo poo," they would rush to sit her on the toilet. Ninety percent of the time, of course, she had done the deed already. Her daycare teacher reported that she did pee a few times on the toilet. All of this made us shirk from the responsibility. Maybe M was ready, but we were not. It's a little selfish, I know. Since E was potty trained at age two, we had given ourselves an unspoken two year deadline. We reasoned that two didn't seem so late anyways. 

So how did it go? Day one went better than expected. M has a strong rebellious streak. And she doesn't mind messes. So we expected a messy, rebellious day. Instead, she had only one accident in the morning. After that, she peed on the toilet every time after announcing "pee pee." She also pooped successfully. Jamie Glowacki's book recommends for the kid to be naked from the waist down on the first day of training. This is so she can better understand what is happening when she has an accident. Once she understands that, she can begin to make the connection between wanting to pee and using the toilet. It also promotes clarity: there is no diaper sometimes and potty sometimes. As Glowacki puts it, it is difficult to learn a new behavior when you are still actively engaging in the old behavior. 

Potty Training in Different Countries

The environment of potty training this time around is completely different. As I mentioned, M's daycare has been encouraging of potty training and very willing to help. Now that we have undertaken the task, making the transition from potty training at home to potty training at daycare seems entirely doable. It is a very community-oriented mindset. You experience this in other circumstances too - like when other people (usually older people, to be honest) scold your kids. While this might be unacceptable in the U.S., it's not in Japan. It's happened to me, but I didn't mind much, as my reaction to what M was doing would have been similar. The community approach to raising kids works in a society of nearly uniform culture and values. 

E's daycare in Chicago had a hands-off policy for potty training. Even so, kids had to be potty trained to progress to the older class. E was in an older toddlers class when she began potty training. Although the classroom had its own bathroom with a child-sized toilet, it was used as a storage room and was thus unusable. She was also not allowed to visit the neighboring classroom's bathroom on the basis that it would disrupt the teacher to student ratios of each class. There was simply no support or infrastructure for a two year old to potty train. Parents were solely responsible for leading their kids to that milestone. It reflected an individual-minded approach to raising children. On the one hand, you get executive power. On the other, you have the exclusive burden. 

Toilet training in Japan begins early compared to the U.S. It is as early as age one and usually before age two. It is an interesting topic with cultural, socio-economical, psychological, and environmental angles. I won't get into it, but it is interesting if you want to read about Freud, science, and policy. 

Anyways, it is an all-consuming activity. All I can think about right now is potty training. With E, day two was actually than day one, and after a setback, she finally learned how to pull her pants down and go to the toilet. Day one was too easy to be true, so I am treading cautiously. My husband is more optimistic. We shall see what day two brings. I will report back next week. 

A New Sort of Halloween

I spotted the first signs of Halloween on September 1, at the supermarket. There was a special display of sweets in Halloween-themed packaging. Rather than the candy and chocolate you would typically find in America's Halloween aisles, these were bite-sized cakes and biscuits. During that first week of September, I noticed Halloween decorations everywhere. And not just a hint of the holiday but elaborate displays at store windows. "That's weird. Nobody celebrated Halloween here when I was growing up," said my husband. It seems the increase in Halloween festivities is commensurate with the increase of Anglo expats living and settling in Tokyo. It doesn't have the same presence in Japan's small towns and the country. Even in Tokyo, it was different from the American Halloween I know. 

Japanese Halloween is more about the aesthetic of Halloween. There are decorations everywhere, and a small handful of young adults might dress up in costume and walk around the famed Shibuya Scramble. I think the very act of wearing a costume is so novel that the costumes themselves tend to be conventionally commercial: amongst adults, mostly Squid Game and Pokemon. You will be hard pressed to see abstract themes here. 

Kids don't generally wear costumes or go trick-or-treating. Aside from a few nightlife hotspots, Halloween night in residential neighborhoods is a quiet night like any other. Since E attends international school, though, she got to celebrate Halloween...a lot. Her school had a no-uniform-day, where student could wear costumes to school. A couple of her classmates prepared goodie bags for everyone to take home. Most of the treat giving happened after school on Friday at a nearby park, where classmates gathered to exchange treats. It was more like Valentine's day, with kids handing each other goodie bags. You wouldn't hear anyone saying trick-or-treat. 

This was our first Japanese Halloween haul. Some familiar, many unfamiliar. 

This was my favorite. 

E's favorite. 

The big party was on Saturday, the day before Halloween. On Friday, October 29, I went to buy treats for the party and found the most shocking thing about Halloween in Japan: the Halloween candy disappears before Halloween. Not a pumpkin or witch in sight. Instead, I saw Christmas decorations! Christmas before November! Without the buffer of Thanksgiving, the Christmas spirit has already arrived in Tokyo. I realized that, in Japan, Halloween was more an abstract part of the autumnal scenery than a concrete holiday to celebrate. 

A classmate's mom had reserved an indoor play space for the party. It included an inflatable play structure, a pretend grocery store, an indoor sand pit, and other random toys. Parents brought treats, either food or toys, and the kids came in their Halloween costumes. They played some and trick or treated some. There were more toys than candy, and the spread was impressive. 

I had been feeling nostalgic for last year's Halloween, but there was plenty of celebrating this year. Despite the ubiquitous Halloween decorations around town, there is no tradition of trick-or-treating in Japan. We felt lucky to be part of a smaller community that made Halloween special for the kids. Happy Halloween!