Thanksgiving in Japan

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" rowspan="2" width=200 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="31b64643.jpg"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Konichiwa from Japan"><U><B>Konichiwa from Japan</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id26.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="November in Nagoya"><U><B>November in Nagoya</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Thanksgiving in Japan</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="So much to see in Kyoto"><U><B>So much to see in Kyoto</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id51.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bon nen kai"><U><B>Bon nen kai</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id52.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Iseshima"><U><B>Ise-shima</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id53.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="New Year in Tokyo"><U><B>New Year in Tokyo</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id55.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="January Weekends"><U><B>January Weekends</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hiroshima"><U><B>Hiroshima</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id75.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Eriks Birthday Party"><U><B>Erik's Birthday Party</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id77.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Osaka"><U><B>Osaka</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id79.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Susans Birthday"><U><B>Susan's Birthday</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id78.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hakone"><U><B>Hakone</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id80.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Lucinda and Aaron in Japan"><U><B>Lucinda and Aaron in Japan</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id56.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="What well miss about Japan"><U><B>What we'll miss about Japan</B></U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="2f864643.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#6666FF" FACE="Arial" ><B>The Reads in Maryland</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FF00" FACE="Arial" >   </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#333399" FACE="Arial" > </FONT> |     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Reads in Maryland"><U>home</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id3.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Our Interests"><U>Our Interests</U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Photo Albums"><U>Photo Albums</U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id82.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Places Weve Been"><U>Places We've Been</U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id5.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Favorite Links"><U>Favorite Links</U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id38.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Keeping in Touch"><U>Keeping in Touch</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=390 colspan=2 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Thanksgiving in Japan</div> <div> It's now December in Nagoya. Boy time flies. It's been while since our last update. We've been quite busy. We went to Kyoto for two days from 11/30 to 12/1.  Kyoto was great and I think it deserves a separate entry. <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><IMG SRC="114c8960.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="150" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="5" VSPACE="5"></FONT>For American Thanksgiving this year we went to Kuranke with Hassegawa, a graduate student in Erik's lab. Kuranke is about 45 minutes drive from Nagoya and is known for its autumn night-time foliage viewing. For Thanksgiving dinner, we had teishomen, noodles made from shaving a ball of dough. We didn't have Thanksgiving off, but we did have Labor Thanksgiving Day off which was the Saturday before, 11/24. Here in lab everyone usually works M-F and also Sat. half-day. This is not so in government and business offices where people work M-F. Erik and I brought a pumpkin cheesecake to lab to celebrate American Thanksgiving.</div> <bR> <div> We've been site-seeing as usual. For Labor Thanksgiving holiday we took it easy. On Saturday, we went to Atsuta Temple for the fall foliage. Atsuta shrine houses one of the three Japanese emperial treasures, the grass-cutting sword. You can't see the real one, it's housed in the shrine but we saw a replica. It's looks too big to handle. Near Atsuta temple there is Nagoya's largest Japanese garden, Shiratoria Gardens. It's very pretty with the crimson maple trees, a pond, and miniature waterfalls. So basically a relaxing weekend.</div> <bR> <div> On Saturday 11/16, Erik and I went to the Toyota Commemorative Museum and the Noritake China Gardens. The Toyota Museum was very interesting. Toyota started by making mechanical looms and then moved into car production. We saw mechanical looms at work. They are so sophisticated now that one can weave pictures into cloth, using a computerized loom with thousands of colors of cloth. Near the Toyota Museum is Noritake Garden, a park next to the china factory. We saw samples of Western-style china made by Noritake and you can paint your own designs. We'll hopefully go back and do that.</div> <bR> <div> On Friday 11/15, Erik gave a seminar at his university. He got an honorarium of 30,000 yen but we spent the entire fortune on donuts and pizza. We had pizza everyday that weekend. A large pizza costs around 3000 yen and it's about the size of a medium pizza in America. For our first pizza trial, we intended to order a potato salad-topped pizza and since we can't read/speak japanese Erik ordered using the letter designation "NT"  but the order-taker heard "MT," a big difference. We ended up getting a spicy Mexican Taco pizza (the spiciest pizza we've ever had) because of mis-communication. :-) Our second and third pizzas were correctly ordered but no less bizarre. Japanese and American pizzas share the same basic ingredients, cheese and tomato sauce and thin crust and you can order Pizza Hut or Dominos if you wanted. But we chose asparagus, shrimp, and mayo pizza and a Mixed pizza, which means each quarter of the pizza had a different topping. One quarter potato salad-topping, one quarter was squid and tomato, one quarter was bacon and ham, and the last quarter was crab.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>