Thursday, November 25, 2004
We Eat Sushi on Thanksgiving
As my train of thought strayed away from the yawns and gulps of coffee, I vaguely recalled the conversation this morning.
... a buzz on the wooden floor. Damn it. I thought I had 10 more minutes.
The alarm clock-substitute mobile phone just buzzed away, and I picked it up expecting it to kill my eardrums with a high-pitched chirp. Instead, the screen said, "Call 1." I answered in the sleepy idiot way that sounds similar to Yogi Bear, "Heelo-o-o...?"
"Hi, Saki-chan! Happy Thanksgiving!" My Mother still thinks that the time difference is minus 4, flip the am/pm between Hong Kong and the West Coast. I wouldn't have minded, but it was at that terrible moment of "I need to get up and go to work," so I hesitated. "Oh, hi...um... yeah, I need to get ready for work."
But it was nice to hear everyone's voice. Mom, Dad, Rin... this time, they decided that it wasn't worth it to waste precious international phone minutes putting the irrate cat and the panting dog on the phone (thank goodness). I don't need a holiday to remind me how thankful I am for my family, but it was a very nice gesture.
We're not an American family, and we always felt liminally awkward about the whole ordeal. We bring sushi appetizers when we are invited for Thanksgiving dinners and cook ham if we celebrate at home. My Dad and Rin pretend to watch American football with a Budweiser in hand for a couple of hours, but bore of it and go back to listening to Steely Dan and playing the guitar. In gradeschool, my brother and I thought the word "cornucopia" was a useless, erotic sounding word and turkeys were stunted ostriches that cross-bred with roosters. Actually, the Japanese word for "turkey" is "seven faced bird," which made no sense to us at all and we had no intention of eating a bird with 7 heads. The biggest mystery to us Long Islander kids (who went arrow-head hunting in the nature parks for fun), was why the heck we celebrate the friendship of the Native Amer-Indians and the Pilgrims when all the Indians got was a "thanks for giving us the food, but we have to drive you out of your land." All we found in Long Island in the 1980s were arrow-heads, but no Indians.
When I was about 7-years old, our family took a road trip to Boston. We did all the touristy stuff, including boarding the Mayflower II and walking around in Plymouth Plantation. We wondered if the people actually spin their own wool and churn butter for a living. It would have probably bursted our childhood bubbles if the costumed employees were smoking a Marlbro Light or wearing Nike sneakers. Then my brother and I played with our Teddy Roosevelt teddy bears in the car, alternating English and Japanese --- gosh, I have a totally Asian-American childhood.
In any case, Thanksgiving is still a nostalgic yet not really "our" holiday. My family decided to leave Japan in 1986 to move to New York. Since then, I have had chances to go back to Japan, but it never felt like my home again. Instead, the US became the new land - the land of opportunity, my childhood years, and where my parents felt comfortable enough to build their family. In a sense, we became pilgrims of a kind, taking a chance to uproot ourselves in hopes of a better life. When we first moved, my parents struggled with the language barrier, and we had occasional silly incidents like asking the police officer how to eat an artichoke. But the people of Long Island were very kind (also, very geriatric & children friendly, as every other neighbor wanted to give us cookies and pinch our cheeks). We were the strange foreigners in their calm, suburbia community. They were the natives, extending a warm welcome trying to figure out how to interact with us.
I also became very good friends with Jewish girls in New York and Illinois, so I learned somewhat about the Jewish festivals too. Our family was invited to Passover Dinners and I went to my best friend's Bat Mitzvah. My favorite is when they have a little fun - my friend's dad had a colorful yamulke with propellers on top.
...and my thoughts trail away, as I fantasize about the Thanksgiving dinner my family is having. Rin is going to cook turkey this year. He promised to send photos (kind of like how he did that for the Japanese New Year's - for the last 4 years, I have missed out on the biggest Japanese holiday - no wonder I feel confused about my cultural identity).
Fu... Happy Thanksgiving.
p.s. - Osechi
... a buzz on the wooden floor. Damn it. I thought I had 10 more minutes.
The alarm clock-substitute mobile phone just buzzed away, and I picked it up expecting it to kill my eardrums with a high-pitched chirp. Instead, the screen said, "Call 1." I answered in the sleepy idiot way that sounds similar to Yogi Bear, "Heelo-o-o...?"
"Hi, Saki-chan! Happy Thanksgiving!" My Mother still thinks that the time difference is minus 4, flip the am/pm between Hong Kong and the West Coast. I wouldn't have minded, but it was at that terrible moment of "I need to get up and go to work," so I hesitated. "Oh, hi...um... yeah, I need to get ready for work."
But it was nice to hear everyone's voice. Mom, Dad, Rin... this time, they decided that it wasn't worth it to waste precious international phone minutes putting the irrate cat and the panting dog on the phone (thank goodness). I don't need a holiday to remind me how thankful I am for my family, but it was a very nice gesture.
We're not an American family, and we always felt liminally awkward about the whole ordeal. We bring sushi appetizers when we are invited for Thanksgiving dinners and cook ham if we celebrate at home. My Dad and Rin pretend to watch American football with a Budweiser in hand for a couple of hours, but bore of it and go back to listening to Steely Dan and playing the guitar. In gradeschool, my brother and I thought the word "cornucopia" was a useless, erotic sounding word and turkeys were stunted ostriches that cross-bred with roosters. Actually, the Japanese word for "turkey" is "seven faced bird," which made no sense to us at all and we had no intention of eating a bird with 7 heads. The biggest mystery to us Long Islander kids (who went arrow-head hunting in the nature parks for fun), was why the heck we celebrate the friendship of the Native Amer-Indians and the Pilgrims when all the Indians got was a "thanks for giving us the food, but we have to drive you out of your land." All we found in Long Island in the 1980s were arrow-heads, but no Indians.
When I was about 7-years old, our family took a road trip to Boston. We did all the touristy stuff, including boarding the Mayflower II and walking around in Plymouth Plantation. We wondered if the people actually spin their own wool and churn butter for a living. It would have probably bursted our childhood bubbles if the costumed employees were smoking a Marlbro Light or wearing Nike sneakers. Then my brother and I played with our Teddy Roosevelt teddy bears in the car, alternating English and Japanese --- gosh, I have a totally Asian-American childhood.
In any case, Thanksgiving is still a nostalgic yet not really "our" holiday. My family decided to leave Japan in 1986 to move to New York. Since then, I have had chances to go back to Japan, but it never felt like my home again. Instead, the US became the new land - the land of opportunity, my childhood years, and where my parents felt comfortable enough to build their family. In a sense, we became pilgrims of a kind, taking a chance to uproot ourselves in hopes of a better life. When we first moved, my parents struggled with the language barrier, and we had occasional silly incidents like asking the police officer how to eat an artichoke. But the people of Long Island were very kind (also, very geriatric & children friendly, as every other neighbor wanted to give us cookies and pinch our cheeks). We were the strange foreigners in their calm, suburbia community. They were the natives, extending a warm welcome trying to figure out how to interact with us.
I also became very good friends with Jewish girls in New York and Illinois, so I learned somewhat about the Jewish festivals too. Our family was invited to Passover Dinners and I went to my best friend's Bat Mitzvah. My favorite is when they have a little fun - my friend's dad had a colorful yamulke with propellers on top.
...and my thoughts trail away, as I fantasize about the Thanksgiving dinner my family is having. Rin is going to cook turkey this year. He promised to send photos (kind of like how he did that for the Japanese New Year's - for the last 4 years, I have missed out on the biggest Japanese holiday - no wonder I feel confused about my cultural identity).
Fu... Happy Thanksgiving.
p.s. - Osechi
// posted by sakit @ 11:23 PM 
