Thanksgiving in Kyoto

I feel I should make this blog a little more blog-ish. On one hand, I should be talking about my life and reporting back to my homies in America - but on the other hand I should be offering advice to future study-abroaders in Japan, right? So - herein lies how to do thanksgiving in Kyoto!

On a rainy Wednesday night, I googled, "thanksgiving kyoto" and much to my dismay, not much useful information came up. But there are in fact many things you can do!

1) Meidi-ya (明治屋) on Sanjo between Kawaramachi and the bridge to the Keihan line has many imported goods essential for Thanksgiving. Frozen 5 kg turkeys go for about 6000 yen (about $60). You should also make sure to buy croutons (for stuffing!), chicken stock (also for stuffing), celery, gravy mix, jellied cranberries, and pumpkin puree (for pumpkin pie) as these can be hard to find in regular groceries.

2) If your microwave-oven isn't big enough, you could try KFC (for example, the one on Teramachi) for some American-style chicken. I personally think this is too pricey for just chicken.

3) Do what we did - buy chicken breasts at the grocery store and bake it yourself:
1. Combine in a bowl about 3 tbsp cooking oil, 1 tsp of garlic powder and 1/2 tsp of each of the following: rosemary, parsley, allspice, salt, pepper. Basically we bought any spice at the grocery store that sounded good - feel free to combine whatever you want!
2. Coat each chicken breast in the mixture and then place it on aluminum foil. Add some pieces of chopped garlic if available
3. Wrap the aluminum foil around the chicken to create a pocket.
4. Cook at 200 degrees celsius (400 fahrenheit) for 45 minutes (actually probably less but my microwave oven is mad ghetto!)

4) Mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie - You can find all these recipes online, my friends and I made these / winged them so I don't have many details. I recommend All Recipes which has reviews of every recipe.

5) Croutons are fairly expensive. Instead of croutons, you can buy sliced bread, toast it, and then cut it up into small crouton-like pieces.

6) It's incredibly hard to find pie crust in Kyoto! I recommend making one yourself rather than shelling out money for it. They're very easy to make. As a pie tin, I use a round aluminum shabu-shabu container (you can get one at the 100 yen shop in the basement of the Sanjo Keihan station, below Boof-Off). Then, use this recipe: easy pie crust. I recommend using less salt, like 1/2 teaspoon, for pie pumpkin.

Voila, now all you need is a bunch of friends, something to give thanks for, and you have Thanksgiving in Japan!

I'm bad at updating things :-(