Thanksgiving in Japan

[Saionji Shonagon]

Kinro Kansha no Hi "Labor Thanksgiving Day (November 23), official national holiday since 1948.
www.japan-guide.com/e/e2062.html

Niiname-sai "New taste festival" (November 23)
"This is a two-part festival: The Omike-sai, a minor ceremony, is held prior to Niiname-sai, the major ceremony. In the Omike-sai, food is offered to the gods. In the Niiname-sai, the Emperor himself offers the new rice to the gods at the Imperial Palace and at the same time sends an imperial messenger with offerings to Ise. After the new rice is offered to the gods at Ise Jingu, the Emperor himself eats the new rice. Until then the people are not permitted to eat new rice."
www.infocreate.co.jp/hometown/ise/jingu/july3a-e.html

Not a cranberry in sight.

Saionji

[solveig]

Noble Cousins!

Greetings from Solveig! Well, the Japanese love holidays and are prone to import them. The Japanese imported Valentine's Day some time ago. Apparently, they recently imported Halloween. When I was living in Tokyo, I was suprised one November to discover that the Japanese were importing Thanksgiving with merchants selling small to medium sized roaster chickens. This is a huge amount of chicken to see at one one time when in a base culture wher chicken is sold in 100 gram units.

[Ki no Kotori]

Hee! This reminds me of a very funny, albiet embarrassing experience that I had a couple of years ago with a Japanese penpal.

We were discussing Thanksgiving, and I was explaining that my husband and I would probably end up having chicken, as I did not care much for turkey. My penpal had mentioned that he had never tried turkey, as it was extremely expensive over in Japan, but that chicken was popular.

"So," he replied in his next letter, "do you like eating cock?"

The poor man sincerely did not know what that entailed, and he was aghast when I explained to him what that term meant! I'm not an English teacher, so I wasn't quite sure what to say, so I just told him he should ALWAYS use the term "chicken" when referring to chicken meat, regardless of what kind of chicken it was in life.

IIRC, chicken in Japanese is "toriniku" which is "birdmeat", but tori could mean any kind of bird, so you kinda have to tell by context.

--Ki no Torahime

[AJBryant]

IIRC, chicken in Japanese is "toriniku" which is "birdmeat", but tori could mean any kind of bird, so you kinda have to tell by context.

Minor expoundment: chicken-the-animal is "niwatori" (lit. "garden bird"); chicken-the-food is indeed "toriniku."


Effingham

[Saionji Shonagon]

The poor man sincerely did not know what that entailed, and he was aghast when I explained to him what that term meant!

Circa 1980-mumble, I'm at a nice central London hotel with three friends from college getting directions from the concierge. As we're about to leave, he asks if we would care to be knocked up in the morning. Joan giggles, Kathy looks about ready to lunge at the poor man. I explain in a low voice that he should probably use the term "wake-up call" with American guests and why. Mortification ensues.

Isn't travel fun?

Saionji

[Abe Akirakeiko]

The first Thanksgiving I ever spent away from home was in 1998, when I was studying abroad at Tokai University in Hadano, Kanagawa-ken. All of us Wake Forest students were staying in an international students' house with our own cook, who would come in to prepare breakfast and dinner for our group.

For Thanksgiving, somehow the amazing man did manage to find two huge turkeys, which he roasted to absolute perfection (think golden brown, little paper booties, the whole bit). The rest of us gathered up Thanksgiving recipes from home and proceeded, with variable success, to make all of our favorite side dishes. It was quite an adventure to scare up certain "American" ingredients, and to negotiate the foibles of Japanese gas ovens...but it was a great bonding experience, especially as we kept running in and out of the master kitchen to steal different utensils/pop things in the oven, at which point we'd explain to the interested cook exactly what it was we were trying to make.

The next day, we were off on a weekend trip to the Kiso Valley (Tsumago and Magome), so we packed up all the leftovers and had turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches on the Shinkansen.

It's one of my favorite memories from Japan.

[OgamiBusho]

For many years my wife, Viscountess Akiley, taught ESL to Japanese doctors (and their families) who came to work at the University of Buffalo or at Roswell Cancer Institute. She saw it as her duty to have the Japanese folks really experience America. She took the wives shopping, helped them negotiate the DMV, and so on. One of her favorite things to do was to invite them to our house for Thanksgiving. (It was one of my least favorite things-- it took me *days* to 'Japanese clean' the house!) It was always fun to see their expressions when I would bring out a 25-pound-plus turkey to carve at the table. They would always take a dozen or more pictures, usually with one or more of their children beside it for scale. And they never failed to be shocked at the volume of food they were sent home with.

[Please Delete]

FYI, you can often use 'capon'; although technically it is a castrated male cock, it is usually the only variety you find on the dinner table (it is castrated specifically because of the effect this has on the meat).

-Ii

"Bring us in no capon's flesh, for that is often dear;
Nor bring us in no duck's flesh, for they slobber in the mere.
But bring us in good ale, good ale, bring us in good ale.
For our blessed Lady's sake, bring us in good ale!"
- "Bring us in Good Ale", 15th C.
--