Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it’s not officially Thanksgiving yet but I thought now would be a good time to blog about it before I forget. For the past 10 years, Thanksgiving weekend was always about Nationals. The team from Ontario would travel together and it was always a good time. This year, like 2 years ago, would have been extra fun because the Nationals are being held in Toronto, which means that afterwards my family will probably go over to one of my relatives’ house for a big Thanksgiving dinner. How I miss both those things. But strangely enough, I am thankful for missing out on those things. I will definitely appreciate them more once I get back to Canada.

I’ve always loved karate but there’s something about training in Japan that has inspired me. Fundamentally, I’m practicing the same things as I was practicing at home but it’s the little things that the Japanese emphasize that make it fun to learn. At home I would train and competing at Nationals would be the reward. Here, training is the reward. It’s awesome. For those that don’t do karate, I’ve probably bored you and you’ve closed the browser window. I’m sorry.

Onto the food. I miss Toronto food. We have so much variety I never even realized it. We can choose to eat Italian, Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and burgers and steak. Oh, and PHO! And we have buffets. In Japan, they have Japanese and I’ve seen Italian but it’s really Japanese-style Italian food. While I’m home for Christmas, it is my goal to eat all these different foods (minus the Japanese). As much as I miss home cooking, I think I need to eat out a lot. This was my Thanksgiving dinner: pan-fried pork cutlets in olive oil with oregano, boiled potatoes which were later browned in the leftover pork oil, and eggplant stirfried in olive oil and garlic.

I will throw in these random pictures of some Kit-Kat bars that I bought a few days ago. One was green tea flavour, and I think the other was lychee flavour but I’m not sure.

That’s all for now. Happy Thanksgiving! (In Japan, Thanksgiving isn’t until Nov. 23rd, haha… but I celebrate it like a Canadian!)