Happy Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving for a week, starting last Saturday with a Thanksgiving Potto-Rakku at our apartment with 10 fellow Tokoyites. It was a feast! One table was filled with a variety of fabulous and traditional Thanksgiving dishes, so we all squeezed into the tatami room and sat Japanese-style on the floor to eat. We also celebrated Ryan's birthday with a delicious cheesecake Cortney made. The desserts over-flow-ethed, since in addition to the cheesecake we had two pumpkin pies courtesy of Dan and Miho and coffee spiked with a 1-2 punch combination of liquor, whipped up by Scott. We were all in food comas by the time we queued up "A Christmas Story" - a fun day with all the elements (except family,of course, which we really missed!).

Later in the week, after having our fill of turkey from the smoked bird we ordered online and served on Saturday, we decided to celebrate again on Thursday, the actual day, by going out for a yummy dinner at a gumbo and oyster bar in Ikebukuro. I slurped some raw oysters from different parts of Japan, while Pete sampled the gumbo. In order to complete the self-stuffing, we tried some cafe mocha stuffed crepes from Dipper Dan's. Both food establishments are in the chipperly-named Sunshine City, the tallest building in Ikebukuro, with lights on the top that change colors. Our final celebration involved a walk to our neighborhood park, Shin Edogawa, on a crisp, sunny Saturday where the leaves seemed to be peaking. Click here for a quickie video from the park with a final Thanksgiving greeting from Tokyo.