For our one (and only, hopefully) Christmas away from home and family, we decided to make the best of it by searching for Christmas tradtiions here in Tokyo and also making sure to continue many of our own.

We bought new ornaments for our Charlie Brown 2.0 Tree, ones that I hope we’ll keep for a very long time to be able to remember what it was like to spend Christmas in Japan.  We made, decorated, and gifted Christmas cookies.  We went out looking for Christmas lights, although not in a car in our neighborhood, but by train to the other side of the city.

All in all, Christmas was excellent.  We attended a gorgeous candlelight service in which the pastor challenged us to accept that our world is a very messy place that is in constant need of “light.”  He encouraged us to not lose hope in the “mess” and to do our best to shine a compassionate light where it is needed most.  After that, we sang Silent Night in English and Japanese, which was moving enough for one of us to get choked up (who may or may not have been a bearded emotional wreck).  In the morning, we opened gifts from family and each other and spent the rest of the day creating and enjoying incredible food courtesy of Tokyo Terrace.

Good times.

Here are some photos and videos from our Christmastime in Tokyo.  Please leave questions/comments if you have any.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  (New Year’s post coming very soon).

(No idea what this Christmas display is all about)

Having fun exchanging a gift in trendy Omotesando

Buying some treats in Omotesando

An artsy Christmas Tree exhibit

Real snow, trucked in from the mountains to Tokyo

Our Christmas door decoration

Christmas in Japan was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we will both treasure for many years.  It wasn’t quite the same as usual, and was certainly quite difficult to be so far from those we love, but it was a great opportunity for which we are deeply grateful.

Merry Christmas 2009!

1.) After realizing late last night that we forgot to pick up milk, essential for our morning latte routine, I just walked to the local convenience store to pick up a liter of milk.  I grabbed a five-dollar (500 yen) coin, threw on a sweatshirt, and walked over in my pajamas.  One of our favorite price comparisons showing the high cost of food here is the cost of milk.  A liter costs between 250 and 300 yen.  That puts the price per gallon at between $9.45- $11.34!  Ay caramba.  As I checked out at the “combini” (convenience store), I found it pretty hilarious that the clerk put a tall straw in my bag with the milk.  I mean, who wouldn’t need a straw for enjoying their morning liter of (whole) milk?

2.) We are doing all we can to make sure that the Whites will be a trio next year and not just a duo.  No, no, not planning on a baby yet, but we’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of our pup, Callie.

Our sweet Callie

Dogs are now commonplace in Japan (developed significantly in the last fifteen years) and we moved to our current apartment because it’s a great dog-friendly building right next to tons of open space and natural areas.  We’ve located dog food, groomers, pet-friendly rides to/from the airport, and a few local veterinarians.  However, one of my only worries about bringing Callie is her accident-prone nature.  She’s had a handful of Animal-911 style visits to the vet, and it was always easy to put her in the backseat and drive her straight to the vet.  Now, without a car, I was a little worried about what to do if she had an emergency.  I can certainly carry her the 10 minute walk to the vet, but that could be problematic with an injury of some sort.  Check this out…

After getting a hint about this place from our friends Jeff & Kimiko Nicholson, who have a dog in our neighborhood (that’s “Buddy” in the photo to the left), I had a great find this morning.  Milk and straw in hand, I walked about 30 meters past the convenience store and learned that Japan’s top animal-medical facility is less than 150 meters from our front door.  Perusing their website, I saw photos of many people I recognize from my daily bike ride to school.  I constantly wonder where they are all going.  It turns out they are some of the top animal doctors in the country.  So, not so worried about that issue anymore.  Bring on Callie!

Links to their website:

This first large-scale animal medical center in Japan has facilities compatible with those used in ordinary large hospitals for humans.

http://www.jarmec.jp/concept/ (the woman in the green turtleneck is someone I ride past every morning)

http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_animal_referral_medical_center_calls_dogs_give_blood_29877

Rachael and Mom with their "girls"

Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

Our Thanksgiving video is ready, right in time for Christmas Eve tomorrow!  Sorry for the delay, but we hope you enjoy sharing in the craziness of putting on Thanksgiving in Tokyo (without a car, a full kitchen, or an oven).

Happy belated Turkey Day.

“If you could just hold off for another 30 minutes…”

That’s what I wanted to say to Mother Nature at 5:45am this morning when she shook our apartment with a nice, wobbly 5.1 magnitude earthquake.  According to Wikipedia, they “can cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions. At most slight damage to well-designed buildings.”

No damage to our place or stuff, but getting woken up 30 minutes before your alarm clock is supposed to go off?  Not cool Ms. Nature.  Not cool at all.

Charlie Brown would be proud of this tree.

Here is our Christmas tree for Christmas in Japan 2009.  It’s decked-out with some of the decorations that came in the box and some beautiful snowflakes that Rebecca cut out of magazines when she was here. We had fun putting this little tree together.

A few gifts ready for the return of my beautiful bride (thanks for all the wrapping lessons Mom).

Welcome back to Tokyo, “Tokyo Terrace!”

Unless you’re here by accident, anyone reading this blog must be familiar with Rachael’s successful launch of www.TokyoTerrace.com earlier this year.  Through this blog, Rachael’s passion for food has accelerated and grown and I’ve had the great privilege of holding on for dear life as this project has taken off.

Each week, I certainly expect doing lots of dishes, but also can look forward to incredible meals I would otherwise only get to taste in a trendy Tokyo (or Minneapolis) restaurant.  I have the best guinea pig job in the world.

Unfortunately, this happy little guinea pig has been running hopelessly on his circular treadmill for two weeks straight.

Last year, we returned home to spend the holidays with family and friends.  In an attempt to save some money, I stayed back this year, suggesting that she go home for Christmas.  Instead, Rachael was nice enough to leave early so that she could be back in Japan to spend Christmas with me.  I know, she’s a sweet one.    So, I’ve been experiencing life in Tokyo…without Tokyo Terrace.

My first dinner without her was not pretty.  In fact, it was awful.  I took what was in the fridge, added it to the carrot and pesto sauce (first non-homemade pesto I’ve had in years) that I bought at the store, and threw it all together.  So, spaghetti, bratwurst, carrots, and jarred pesto.  As these Facebook comments suggest, I should be ashamed to even post this photo, but it makes for a good story so what the heck!

“Oh gosh Brad.. I am sure it tasted good…but it don’t look all that appealing. Get Rachael back here!”

“Ha…you should see the crap I eat…”

“We heard about this! You’re lucky to have Rachael in your life!”

(My favorite) “Brad- A word of advice: please leave the food blog in Rachael’s hands. You shouldn’t even post photos like that on Facebook!”

“Yep, methinks maybe leave the foodiness to Rachael. Does Tokyo have a McDonald’s? lol”

“That looks seriously disgusting! lol”

“I heard about that little concoction too. Sorry Brad, but let’s face it, you need Rachael.”

(Even my mom couldn’t stay out of the fray) “Well I can verify that you aren’t exactly “at home” in the kitchen! Love, Maa”

So, with my emotional well-being in tatters (no, not really), I set off to make some better meals this week.  Although I went out five times (ramen, tonkatsu, sushi, McDonald’s x 2) and attended one party, that still left me with eight meals on my own.  Five of those meals involved pasta.  Three involved canned tuna.  Most involved one pan and one plate.

Of all the meals, I have to say this was my finest.  It’s still not gonna make me any big bucks in the cooking world, but it was 1.) edible, 2.) delicious, and 3.) somewhat healthy (I think).

So, I present to you my second-to-last bachelor meal: a tuna & cheddar panini with sliced avocado and a touch of wasabi, with a side of sauteed asparagus.

For my final act tonight, I caved into my cravings for a calorie infusion and hit up McDonald’s one last time.  A double quarter pounder with cheese and five-piece order of Chicken McNuggets (things aren’t served or packaged in fours here since the word for “four” is a homonym for “death”).

For some reason that bicycle trip to the store for lightbulbs, or moving, at all…doesn’t sound so appealing anymore…

Thank God my lovely wife is coming home tomorrow.

She is wonderful for so many things other than her cooking, but I have missed her (and her delicious food creations) dearly over the past two weeks.

Since Rachael is at home delighting in Christmas traditions galore, I thought I’d give it my best shot to find Christmas in Japan.

You’ve probably heard the statistic that just 1% of Japanese are Christians, despite a massive American and missionary presence for many years.  Yet even with this small number of Christians, Christmas is actually a pretty big deal here.  Jesus is certainly not the centerpiece of the holiday (is He in many places anyway these days?), but there are certainly enough Christmas lights, music, and Santa hats to go around.

Today, instead of going to my more traditional Lutheran-style service at Tokyo Union Church (where Rachael and I are members), I joined my friend Danny to check out his much more contemporary church.  “Jesus Lifehouse,” as it is called, is a vibrant congregation of young Tokyo-ites (Japanese and foreign) with a hip, 2009-style bilingual service with lights, videos, and a phenomenal worship band.  Danny and I had a great talk about the differing aspects of our churches’ worship styles and it was good to get out of my routine for a night.

It was also great to hear and feel the Christmas message although I’m so far from “home.”  After the service, we went to St. Mary’s (where we teach) for the annual choir concert.  Now, this isn’t just any choir concert.  I can say without a doubt that St. Mary’s (and Seisen, our sister school) put on the best high-school show I have ever seen.  It was done in the Midwestern choral tradition, much like what Rachael and I were fortunate enough to experience at Luther College.  (The choir directors at St. Mary’s are Concordia grads).

Singing the hymns and feeling just a tiny bit of the Christmas at Luther vibe was a welcome experience tonight, especially as I wait eagerly for Rachael to get back to Tokyo this week.  It’ll be different being away from home for Christmas for the first time and I’ll miss my family a great deal, but I’m also looking forward to it since this will probably be the only time we’ll ever celebrate the holidays this way.

Hey friends.

As you may or may not have noticed, this blog has faded a bit lately.  Now that Rachael’s food blog has taken off (and is probably changing our life for the long-term) and I am about to begin my Master’s classes in Education Leadership and Policy Studies (online through the University of California Northridge), I definitely can’t seem to find the time to update this as often.

Plus, I realized something when talking to my dad the other day.  The first days, months, and even year that you’re in a new culture, you notice a lot of surface-level differences.  “They dress funny.”  “It’s so weird when they ______ “

These days, I notice those things, but they don’t catch my attention enough to write about them here.  Whenever we have visitors, Rachael and I both realize how much we have actually gotten used to in our strange new life in Tokyo.  What seems bizarre to others is now just part of our everyday routine.  Would you blog about your drive to work or how people walk down your street?  Probably not.

Apparently, even the way I look (to Tokyoites) has changed.  Recently, two of our good friends, Adam and Allison Hart came to Tokyo to visit for nearly a week (from Dubai).  Whether on the train or in the street, people treated Adam differently than they do me.  They would ask him questions and be extra nice to him.  One woman even stopped to ask if he and Allison needed help finding something when they looked lost.

I think I’ve just lost that, well, “I have no idea what I’m doing” look.  People still look at me strangely (cue jokes), but they can see signs that I usually know what I’m doing and where I’m going, just like them. So, maybe I’m not as noticeable as before.

That doesn’t mean that things here aren’t still fascinating though.  For example, I’m reading a phenomenal book called “Embracing Defeat.”  It’s a Pulitzer winner about post-WWII Japan.  It’s amazing to see the roots of so much of this society’s quarks and how they resulted directly from US policies that we put in place following the war.  From understanding their pacifistic foreign policy to straining to comprehend why men comfortably loiter in 7-11s reading animated porn next to one another (and how this is somehow acceptable), some of these deep, cultural issues are becoming more clear to me.  If this culture is like an iceberg, our first year of blogging exposed the 10% of the iceberg sticking out of the water.  The other 90% of what makes up this amazing place called Japan has mostly been untouched in this blog.  Mostly, that’s because, like this entry, it takes a lot of time and effort to understand and reason through those big issues.

So, we will certainly keep this up when interesting things pop up from time to time.  But gone are the weeks of three or four new posts with photos and videos.  If there’s anything you’d like to read about, let me know and I’d be glad to write about it.

(P.S. Rachael is in the States right now visiting family and we’ll spend this (our first) Christmas abroad, in Japan.  Can’t wait for her to get back.  Maybe we can write about our holidays in Japan.  And our Thanksgiving video will be coming soon after she returns.  I would have posted it sooner, but Rachael borrowed the hard drive that I saved it to!)

This last week, we had the pleasure of hosting a friend of a friend from France who currently lives in Norway but is traveling for a few weeks in Japan and East Asia…whew!  That was a mouthful.

May I introduce, Melanie, lover of all things Japan.  It was super fun hosting her for a week or so, and we look forward to visiting her in Norway & France for sure.

And just because it’s a fantastically ridiculous photo, here’s our Halloween party group shot.  We all dressed up as various characters you might see in Tokyo.  Rachael was a Shibuya girl (fake eyelashes even) and I was a five year-old Japanese schoolboy.  Sorry about showing a little leg…

Last night was a strange one.

As another scrumptious dinner was cooking away, we started to hear the sound of a helicopter getting quite loud outside our window. When we stepped out to see what was going on, we saw police vehicles patrolling the bank of the river, divers in the river, and two helicopters searching up and down the river. No, this is not something we see often here in Kawasaki, Japan.

As you can see, I was not the only person checking out all the hubub.

This helicopter hovered between 50-100 meters about our apartment for a little while. As a kid, I had an entire notebook full of helicopter drawings…this was exciting stuff for Bradley-san.

After well over an hour of circling with floodlights, the helicopters retreated and the police along the river drove off.  It turns out that there’s a horrible gang of pillaging river pirates that prey upon gaijin living next to the river in Kawasaki.

Just kidding.    Dear Mom, Japan is still incredibly safe and there are no river pirates (that we’re aware of).

We have no idea what happened and no real way to find out since we can’t really watch the news. So, an interesting night with a mysterious ending. Thank you Japan.