A Reluctant Thanksgiving

    Like most North Americans living abroad, I spent one week of the fall watching my friends and relatives all have time off to spend together and some sort of great family meal while I was on the other side of the world trying to figure out whether or not to bother participating. As of mid- November, I was resolute to not bother doing anything regarding Thanksgiving turkey this year as I'm the only American in my household. My daughter's only experience was Thanksgiving has been the paltry measures I make here in Japan. My family didn't really have the tradition of a great big family gathering with all the extended relatives, but we did have our own traditions that generally involves watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Dallas Cowboys football game in addition to something of a meal at some point.

    Unfortunately, living in a different time zone means that even with VPNs and streaming services, I don't have a way to watch the same things at the times when I would have. My daughter doesn't have the day off from school so forcing her to stay up late to watch the huge monsters full helium make their way down some Avenue in New York doesn't really makes sense.

    Less than a week before turkey day, I went ahead and purchased a turkey breast on Amazon for 3000 yen. The breast itself weighs about kilo, so its probably an okay price overall, considering it's an import. I also decided to buy a cranberry BBQ sauce to use with it, to add some of that Texas flavor to the traditional Thanksgiving aspects and make something I might actually enjoy. I served this with some fresh veg lightly sautéed and stuffing that was an imported mix, but could easily be made with bread crumbs and spices if need be.


Not your usual cranberry sauce for turkey day, but it made sense to me.


Turkey BBQ sandwich: Actually not bad.

    We also decided to hold off on our celebration until Saturday, a day when the family had more time together. When the big day came, my frozen turkey breast had finally thawed and I started baking it in the toaster oven, a plan that wound up blackening a bit of it but most of the meat was still edible. I also found a recording of the Thanksgiving Day Parade available on YouTube and my daughter and I streamed it, enjoying some of the floats more than others. I never thought I would miss the constant chatter of the Thanksgiving Day hosts, but without their explanations, some of the floats had little to no meaning to us. Still, it was enjoyable enough and unlike when watching it live, we could skip forward when something uninteresting was occurring and go straight to the parts that we actually wanted to see.

    Honestly, my daughter wasn't as into it as I was and I remember being her age and loving it. But this isn't what she grew up with. And that's just how it is.

When I finally got dinner on plates and served, my entire family basically ignored their plates in favor of poking at different electronics or reading manga. After 30 minutes of watching my hard work sit on the table, each plate with a single item having been devoured and 2/3 of the food options just lingering, I went ahead and put away the leftovers.


I'm gonna call that done, since it's all ice cold and all.

    If I were talking to my mother-in-law, I could explain that this would be like her preparing the New Year's feast and having no one bothered to eat almost anything, but I wasn't talking to her. I'm talking to my husband and child, neither of whom have ever prepared food like that. So in the end, they didn't get it, just like I kind of knew they wouldn't, and I was extremely disappointed.

    In the discussions that followed, my daughter insisted that she wants to do Thanksgiving again but this time she would also like to help make the food and that might be the key difference to making it a proper family engagement. I couldn't help but agree.