Ghetto Thanksgiving

So, we had Wednesday off for what is supposedly "Labour Thanksgiving Day". I'm gonna assume that whatever this holiday really is has been lost in translation on my calendar, but alas. We decided to use this day off to celebrate Thanksgiving in our own, kinda ghetto way...

This year's festivities were slightly, um, smaller than last year's since our group of friends has become significantly smaller, see:
Last year

This year


Anyway, Kate offered to host Thanksgiving at her place this year, so Emily, Kouken, Aaron, Kate and I all prepared things to bring. In a rare Martha Stewart moment, I decided I'd make bruschetta, and if you ask me, it turned out beautifully. Tasted good too. My next Martha Stewart moment is scheduled for Christmas time with my sister and serious amounts of flavor bombs (our special word for Christmas Cookies)

Now, what made our celebration especially getto (other than the fact that we are in freakin Japan) are a couple things
1.The Thank-o-lanterns. I mentioned in a previous post that Aaron and I got free pumpkins (kabocha in Japanese) from a random mountainside shop on the way back from Nikko, so we decided to carve them. Our creativity failed when we were thinking of ways to make them Thanksgivingy rather than Halloweeny, but it was still fun. Mine seems to have a bit of an Asian face, though...

2. The food. Yes, if you look closely at this picture, you will notice KFC on the table. I think this is the first time any of us had eaten KFC in like years, but we figured it was American and with no chance of getting Turkeys, it was (kind of) our next best option.

All in all, dinner was good. It was accompanied by 3 bottles of wine and good friends, so how could it not be? Since this is my third Thanksgiving abroad, I must say that I'm looking forward to next year's on American soil... or maybe I'm just homesick right now.

A few non-related notes:
-26 days till I'm home for Christmas!
-When I get back to Japan in January, it'll be snowboarding season!
-I'm stoked for my new shoes (see below)
-The weather in Niigata has been abso-fucking-lutely miserable lately. We are going on like day 9 of rain, thunder, lightning and COLD. The winter rainy season is so much worse than the summer one.
-Aaron and I are heading into Tokyo this weekend. I'm getting my hair cut at the foreigner-run salon (no danger of a mullet this time); I'm buying lots of things at Zara; I'm eating dinner at a crappy American food chain like TGIFridays and I'm gonna love it; and, most importantly I'm gonna get hammered and have a good time. I've noticed that we never have real fun anymore and I'm involuntarily (other than the 10pm weekday curfew) turning into a granny. I want to mingle and see cute boys... I miss having a social life!

That's all for now.