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Thanksgiving
Our First Visitor
Fall Weekend - Saturday

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November 30, 2003

Thanksgiving

De and I brought some Thanksgiving cheer to Toyoshiki this year. We hosted a international Thanksgiving dinner at our house. Two of our guests Lisa(UK) and Shun(JP) never had T-day before, our other guest Steve had not had a Thanksgiving dinner for 3 years. This was an exciting dinner for me too, it was my first attempt at cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner.

Since Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Japan, De didn't have the day off and it was up to me to do all the cooking. After six hours in our tiny kitchen I had prepared tofurkey, baked ziti, mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, salad, stuffing, macaroni salad, and a can of cranberries.

Here are the pictures

Posted by brian at 12:26 AM

November 23, 2003

Our First Visitor

Back in August, Terri, my mom, came to visit us in Japan. She was our first visitor, and so far our only visitor! She was here August 5-21. Brian got to be the tour guide at first because I had to work. But we did manage to spend a great week traveling during Obon (Japan Summer Holiday/Festival Honoring Dead Ancestors). We traveled to Kansai (Kyoto, Himeji, and Osaka) and Chugoku (Hiroshima and Miyajima Island).
The highlight of the trip was catching the Daimonji-yaki in Kyoto, on our way back to Tokyo. It is one of the most famous Obon festivals in Japan. Five enormous fires are lit on the mountains surrounding Kyoto to bid farewell to the souls of ancestors that visited during Obon. It's so famous that Kyoto was booked solid and we had to get a hotel in Osaka for the night! It is a difficult to spectacle to capture, but we tried our best to take a few pictures.

The pictures have been up for awhile, if you haven't seen them yet, please check them out!

First Day
Kyoto
Himeji
Hiroshima
Miyajima Island
Daimonji-yaki
Last Day

Thanks for coming Mom. We miss you!!!!!
-Deanne

Posted by deanne at 03:02 PM

November 22, 2003

Fall Weekend - Saturday

Well, Fall is definitely here in Japan. Almost all the leaves have turned, the weather is getting colder by the minute, and every shop has Christmas decorations up. De and I have been very low key since we returned from Hong Kong. This weekend will definitely low key! This week has been very busy for the both of us. De had a week of open houses and I have slowly been climbing my way out from a mountain of work. Don't get me wrong I am very grateful to be working, it has just been all at once.

I am halfway through "Japanese Film", a book about Japanese film history through the 1980's. It is really interesting. I feel I am understanding Japanese culture just a bit more, through it's film industry. Speaking of books, I saw a English language version of of Michael Moore's new book "Dude Where is my Country?" I was kinda surprised because it was just released in the US. It is next on my reading list.

Thanksgiving is this week and De and I are planning a dinner at our place. Unfortuturely, De does not have off from work so it will be a late dinner. I am in charge of everything and I have been looking up recipes online for a few weeks now. We only invited De's co-workers so it will be small but fun. If I can work out the technical issues I will try to web cast it. I will keep everyone posted.

I am using a new desktop blogging client, Kung-Log, which I hope will help me post more frequently. It also does neat things like automatically paste the name of song I am currently listening to in iTunes:

Shadowboxin' from the album "Liquid Swords" by Genius/GZA
Posted by brian at 05:52 PM

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