friendsgiving

This event was borne out of two separate desires - one, Shiho (my Japanese childhood friend) has been begging for me to host a party at my place for a while now, and two, admittedly, I’ve been feeling pretty homesick lately. I didn’t think I was the homesick type, but when I was picturing living just a normal day without the usual festivities or company on Thanksgiving day, it did honestly make me a bit sad. I’m usually not that into holidays, but Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. Most holidays have evolved to revolve around buying things (we love capitalism), and while technically Thanksgiving has Black Friday (again, we love capitalism), Thanksgiving itself has been left relatively unsullied and remains just about the food and people. I also like how the foods people associate with Thanksgiving are pretty much universal across the country and are actually delicious (rather than simply perpetuating not-so-tasty historical foods for the sake of tradition), so when November rolls around each year, my cranberry sauce on turkey cravings start increasing like clockwork. This time though, as I walked around Tokyo with zero signs of turkey or general Thanksgiving vibes as expected (in fact, most of Tokyo has already converted straight to Christmas decorations), reality hit me that I might not get my beloved Thanksgiving experience this year, only further contributing to my homesickness. Which is slightly related to a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now actually…

My relationship to food here has evolved in a bit of a surprising way over the past year. I was obsessed with Japanese food prior to moving here, and I imagine that’s the case for a lot of people who visit. Every dish is made to perfection, and there is so much variety in the cuisine (while also being quite easy on the palate) - Japanese food is both accessible and refined, a very rare combo. There would always be more foods on my to-try list than meals I’d have in an entire trip (and there would always be so many things to do and see aside from just eating) that I thought it would be impossible to conquer them all. After moving to Tokyo and grabbing meals with people, I started to notice an interesting pattern…foreigners would often suggest non-Japanese restaurants for us to go to. When in Japan, eat Japanese food… was the mindset I had coming in. But it seemed like foreigners were getting quite sick of eating Japanese food. I wasn’t so delusional as to think that wouldn’t happen to me too eventually, but it was hard to imagine I’d ever go from thinking Japanese was the best cuisine in the world to hating it. To be fair, I was mostly correct - I still love Japanese food. But my adoration for it has certainly subsided, and my appreciation and tastes for other foods around the world have increased significantly since being here. For example, I used to think Chinese food was decent, but not amazing. But since Japanese flavor profiles tend to be very mild - e.g. soy, miso, fried stuff with a slightly sweet sauce, the intense spicy-salty-sour-numbing flavors of Chinese food have since become very appealing to me.

What has been most surprising to me though was how much I missed simple, healthy American foods, like a good ol’ Californian mixed greens salad. I used to cook (more like assemble ingredients to be honest) a decent amount back in the US, especially when I was sick of going out to eat, so over the past few years, I developed a set of go-to recipes that skewed very accessible and healthy. I quickly ran into a problem in Japan though. Japanese grocery stores are only stocked with - this is going to be a complete shocker - Japanese ingredients. It was a huge novelty at first, seeing entire aisles dedicated to all different kinds and brands of bonito flakes, miso pastes, and tofu. Ingredients that I previously had to travel long and far and fork up a bunch of money for were now a dime a dozen. Once the novelty wore off though, I realized when it came to making the recipes that I was familiar with and frequently craved, I’d be met with disappointment, not being able to find ingredients I really thought were universal staples. In most situations, I’d have no problem switching my diet over, but all the Japanese recipes I was familiar with (gyudon, curry, tonkatsu, tamagoyaki, okonomiyaki…) I could find available right outside my front door. It would take more time, taste worse, and not really be that much cheaper to make the same food myself at home. So I was left with this situation where despite really wanting a healthy, home-cooked meal, I ended up nearly exclusively eating out.*

A few months ago, one of my friends from school who is Chinese (like, super Chinese - she doesn’t speak a lick of English) offered to take me to Costco. I said hell yeah, of course. The closest Costco is in Kawasaki, about an hour away from where I live by car, so really quite inaccessible. My soul instantly healed as I walked in. The portion sizes were still impractically large, and they didn’t have all the same products as the US, but even something as simple as a loaf of whole wheat bread (specifically, of the Dave’s Killer Bread variety) and their assortment of real cheese (no hate on Japanese grocery “cheese” but…okay I’m hating on it) gave me so much joy. I ate avocado toast for 2 weeks straight after that trip. I was so sad when my avocado toast ran out that I looked up if Costco did delivery, and I found it does through this third-party service called Wolt. I was skeptical that it would work since an hour delivery seems a bit insane, but it turned out pretty darn well actually (I hope I wasn’t the only customer and the driver did a bunch of other deliveries along the way too…).

Anyways, back to Thanksgiving (technically friendsgiving). I thought it would be a great way to utilize my apartment, introduce Shiho and her Japanese friends to American culture, and also invite my American friends who’d probably welcome a nice proper Thanksgiving meal too. And after seeing all the amazing food at Costco that was way too big for me to consume on my own, having a dinner party seemed like the perfect excuse to live out my dreams. There was one big problem though - even if I could source all the ingredients (was still skeptical if this was possible but hoped that I could find reasonable-enough substitutes at least), my kitchen was severely underequipped. I didn’t own an oven or microwave, and every Thanksgiving dish in my recipe repertoire requires an oven (except for mashed potatoes). I didn’t mull on it too much though, and worst-case scenario I could always order food from a restaurant. I invited a couple of people and didn’t bother thinking about it more until the week-of.

It was a few days before the party, and actually only Shiho had fully committed at this point (and Steven, though he’s forced to since he’s basically my weekend roommate now). Though I was personally okay with a smaller party because that would be less stressful cooking-wise for me, I thought it might be a bit sad with only 3 or 4 people. So I started inviting all my American friends I had in Tokyo, expecting most of them to say no because it was a very last-minute invite, and most people here plan their schedules at least a month in advance.** Everyone I invited asked if it was a potluck, but I said, “no, I’ll cook dinner!” hoping I’d be able to execute my Thanksgiving vision more successfully if I made all the dishes. My target was 6-8 people. Against all odds, pretty much everyone ended up saying yes, for a total of 14 people. I was a bit stressed to say the least.

I started to come up with my oven-less menu. I knew I could make mashed potatoes in a pot, though I didn’t have a potato masher. I really hate owning equipment that only gets used for one dish, and even more so for a dish that only gets made once a year, but there is truly no substitute for a potato masher/ricer. My plan was to overcook the potatoes a bit so that it would fall apart easily, and hoped that I could get away with just mashing away with a fork/whisk. Next up, stovetop mac and cheese. I greatly prefer a baked mac because I’m a big fan of mixed textures, and nothing can beat a crispy panko top. I came up with an idea that could solve multiple problems at once. I only had one large pot, which meant that I could only make the potatoes and mac serially, meaning one of the two dishes was going to be cold by dinnertime and there would be intense time pressure trying to cram all the cooking as close to serving-time as possible. Usually I’d be able to keep food at serving temperature with an oven or reheat it with a microwave, but alas. I did have 1 tiny airfryer, but I didn’t have a tray, so I was limited to cooking completely solid foods on a rack in small batches. I came up with the idea to make the mac way ahead of time, cool it in the fridge, and then bread + airfry it in chunks. This way, it could be served as an appetizer as guests slowly arrived, so even those who were arriving later could get a warm piece (at least, that’s how it worked in my mind).

For the main protein, there was no way I could execute anything close to a baked turkey, so I went with the classic Costco rotisserie chicken (which I’ve done for past friendsgivings and it works out perfectly…I may be a bit of a turkey-hater anyways). I really love cranberry sauce, and luckily Costco was selling fresh cranberries (not even canned cranberry sauce), so decided to try my hand at making some myself. I had one tiny quart pot - I’d make the cranberry sauce in it ahead of time (luckily that can be served chilled and/or at room temp), then the gravy closer to serving time. Finally, vegetables - as much as I would’ve loved to serve roasted vegetables, I settled for a simple salad pre-mix. I was worried if this was going to be enough food, I had the ability to estimate how much 4 people could eat, but had no concept of the required portion sizes for 14. I was planning on making a giant batch of mac and potatoes at the very least, which I hoped would provide the majority of the calories. I went to my good pal ChatGPT for advice, and it said I likely had enough food, but if I wanted, I could add stuffing - specifically stuffing made in a nabe (Japanese clay pot typically used for making stews). I totally forgot about stuffing, and I wasn’t planning on using my nabe, so, it would work in theory.

Now that I got my menu set, it was time to buy the groceries. I placed two Costco orders - one for the day before so I could start prepping, and one for right before the party started for any ingredients that needed to be fresher (like the chicken and salad).*** Though I checked off the bulk items, there were a lot of smaller ingredients like spices and macaroni that were vital but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find in a normal Japanese store. After some searching around, it seemed like there were a bunch of specialty grocery stores in the massive conglomerate of department stores atop Ikebukuro station, just two stops north of me. I have a love/hate relationship with station department stores. On one hand, very convenient. On the other hand, I often end up doing so many loops around them that it typically would be much faster to just walk to a building 10 minutes away from the station. I have no idea why, but I swear Japanese department stores/station malls are allergic to directories. I usually use Google Maps to figure out where my store is, which will give me a building name and a floor. Turns out, there are multiple “Tobu” buildings around Ikebukuro station, so I was wandering around like an idiot in the completely wrong place for 30 minutes. This isn’t the first time this has happened too - I once got dinner with a friend at Ikebukuro station, we got so lost trying to find the restaurant I picked out that we ended up wandering the streets for a different spot instead. Someone needs to make proper directories for all these crazy station malls. Anyways, I did find the stores at the end, and I was mostly successful - I couldn’t find fresh thyme, which when I told some people afterwards, they claimed that even their local Japanese grocery store stocked it, so I don’t know what I was doing wrong.

Then came the day of the party. I was juggling cooking (I had to cook in multiple batches too) and cleaning the apartment. I had a few remaining items to pick up so I sent Steven on the shopping errand, which was a huge help. I took a few recipes that I found online and asked ChatGPT to scale those recipes up. It was awesome at doing that, buuut it’s hard to completely trust an LLM with numbers. In any normal situation I would’ve spot-checked the numbers, but at this point I had to just trust. I have no idea why I’m so bad at making roux, but in the first few moments right off the bat things did not seem to be going well. I was worried I added too much milk, that the recipe wouldn’t scale properly, etc. but after adding a bit more flour and being patient, it all came together. I finished my pot of mac and while I probably would’ve preferred a stronger cheese taste, it definitely did the job. Now the problem was…where do I store the mac? I needed the pot to cook the next batch of mac and the mashed potatoes. I didn’t have a tray, so I tried to fashion a tray out of aluminum foil. Steven looked at me skeptically and said that “tray” was going to fall apart instantly. Perhaps I could slide something stiff, like cardboard or a cutting board underneath in order to transport it into the fridge - once it solidifies, it will be easy to handle, but I did have concerns about it ending up in disaster while it was still in liquid form. Steven had the brilliant idea of taking out one of my refrigerator trays and pouring the mac inside there. We took all the contents out, lined it with my foil “tray”, and it worked perfectly. The tray was the exact size of the two huge batches of mac, and it was so easy to transport in and out of the fridge. Hilarious that one of my refrigerator trays was just 100% mac - yeah, I made a lot.

Though I didn’t actually get around to starting the stuffing before the guests arrived, I did one prep step ahead of time. The recipe asks for “dried out bread chunks”, so I cut a baguette into big slices and put it not in my oven, not in my toaster, not even in my air fryer, but in my fish grill, the fun uniquely Japanese appliance most kitchens are stocked with. The fish grill is a narrow, deep chamber with open flames along the sides. I do use it to toast bread often, but you have to be careful - a few seconds too long and you’ll get a burnt brick. It’s like the broil function on American ovens, but so much worse. The first batch of bread I toasted, I turned on the grill for literally 5 seconds, then turned it off and checked on the bread. Wasn’t burnt to a crisp yet. So I turned it back on for 5 seconds, turned it off, then left it in the grill so the residual heat could dry out the bread. I took it out after a few minutes and it was perfect. I attempted the second batch, but I ended up leaving the flame on for a wee bit too long and it was properly burnt on the surface. Still edible, but not good for stuffing. The third batch was a bit browner than I had wanted, but luckily would do the job. Then I attempted the fourth batch, turned on the grill, and at that moment Steven rang the doorbell. I thought to myself, okay, I can run over and open the door (it’s a remote control panel to open the front door of the building - I don’t even have to go to my own apartment door), and then turn off the grill and it will be perfect. Well, my not-actually-adhd-but-might-as-well-be-adhd brain immediately forgot the last step, and I probably started cleaning up the counter or something stupid. Steven came into the apartment, we started chatting about some stuff, and I was like “oh boy that burnt bread [from round 2] is still stinkin’ up the place, huh,” until I realized it was in fact bread round 4 that I was smelling. We rushed over to the grill and pulled it out, only to find 3 charcoal bricks literally in flames. I quickly closed it back up and turned on the fans, hoping I wouldn’t set off the smoke detectors. We pulled it back out a few minutes later, and the flames were still going! We doused it with water and cleaned up the mess, which surprisingly was pretty easy to do, but the apartment air was completely saturated with smoke. I did everything I could, open the balcony windows, keep the fan on high, take out the trash, use one of those free handheld plastic paddle fans to fan away the smoke. I could only hope that the smells of future cooking would override the cloud of burnt smoke by the time the party rolled around.

Next up, mashed potatoes. So my big 4.5L pot is actually a stovetop pressure cooker, and I saw a post online with a pressure-cooked mashed potato recipe. I am a total pressure cooker noob, so it actually took me so long to figure out how to use it, but I can safely say after 4 batches each with multiple rounds of trial-and-error, I definitely know how it works. Was it faster than boiling? Uhh, maybe. (Most likely not.) To be fair, I tried pressure-cooking them with steam which is what the recipe suggested, but I don’t know if there are other ways of pressure cooking? Clearly I didn’t cook enough potatoes to become an expert yet. The other reason why I had to do multiple rounds of pressure cooking is because fork-tender wasn’t enough - the potatoes really had to fall apart in order for me to be able to mash them properly. I had a fork and a whisk, and at this point guests started filing in and offered to help, which was stressful for me but also incredibly kind of them. Out of all the equipment I was severely lacking, I would say the potato masher was the one that would’ve made the biggest difference in the entire meal (not even an oven, shockingly). So, this single-purpose tool is not such a scam after all.

The rotisserie chicken arrived minutes before the scheduled party start time, but it was sadly cold from transport. My initial plan was to place it in an insulated bag so it would stay warm before the party, but that option was off the table. There was no way it was fitting in the air fryer, maybe I could’ve put it in a pot on the stovetop? Or just served it cold? But I, very bravely, decided to take out the rack from the fish grill and place the chicken on the drip pan on the bottom. It fit perfectly. I turned on the grill for a few seconds, and I was so traumatized from the bread incident that I kept checking on the chicken every few seconds, and each time I checked, the chicken did not seem to be on fire. Feeling instilled with confidence, I left it in for a while, turning the fire on for a few minutes, then off for longer just so it could exist in a warm chamber. When it came time to serve it, it was perfectly warmed throughout and was not burnt at all - fish grill works better for things with moisture, noted (now that I’m writing this, I never tried filling the drip tray with water and “grilling” (more like steaming) bread that way - maybe that would actually work?). Finally, everyone had arrived before I actually started on the stuffing. My guests kept asking if they could help, so they basically made the entire dish on their own, and apparently everyone loved it. Nabe stuffing, who would’ve thought? (It was basically savory bread pudding at that point, but I mean, nothing wrong with that).

The only thing I didn’t get around to making in time was gravy, but people seemed very very pleased with the spread in general. I also had help from my friends who did end up bringing more food too. I still had to air fry the mac and cheese which I wanted to serve as the appetizer, but it was a lot less efficient than what I conjured in my mind. I think it turned out alright though, and people kept asking me how in the world did I source all the ingredients, so I’m glad what seemed like a completely stupid amount of effort to accomplish something seemingly simple was appreciated and paid off. For dessert, I got a giant pumpkin pie and 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies from Costco - two more things I’ve been eyeing since my first visit, and I was so happy to be able to get them. I really miss warm chocolate chip cookies from the US, they just aren’t really a thing here, or the few places that do sell them are so insanely expensive. The reason I got the air fryer (not even mine, I’m borrowing it from the friend who initially brought me to Costco) is because I wanted to bake my own chocolate chip cookies, but unfortunately my baking goals have been superseded by my health goals. Of course, the cookies from Costco were not fresh and warm, so I tossed them in the air fryer and they were incredible. The pumpkin pie tasted quite different, and we were discussing what the difference could’ve been. Different pumpkin, different spices perhaps - ultimately we settled on the fact that it probably just had a lot less sugar so it tasted too “healthy” to us. But, it was honestly quite good, just didn’t quite fully scratch the ‘murican pumpkin pie itch for me.

Another minor detail from the party was that when we had furnished the apartment initially, we inherited another household’s entire kitchen setup. I was initially opposed because it seemed like a bunch of things we’d never use. Miles insisted it was okay since it was basically free, but I personally really hate having things that don’t get used because I’m such a packrat - it’s so hard for me to get rid of stuff, which means every new object I acquire feels like a lifetime of responsibility. I have to say though, I basically used every single piece of kitchen equipment (except the bread maker) and every single dish for this party, so, it was worth it. I knew we were short on utensils, and somehow I had the foresight to ask one of my guests to bring some, which indeed was a total lifesaver (every single utensil was used as well). Worst-case, I could’ve bought single-use stuff, but I didn’t have to in the end, which is a win in my book.

After dinner came the most important part of the night. So earlier when I mentioned that Shiho has been begging me to host a party - one of the impetuses of that was because we were talking about American drinking games, and Shiho said she really wanted to play them. The thing about Tokyo is that the vast majority of people have tiny apartments, and there is of course no public space where you can play your own drinking games, so a party at my apartment really was the only option to fulfill this wish. (This is also why I desperately tried to invite a bunch more people week-of.) This is one of the things I don’t really like about Tokyo - there aren’t a lot of large private spaces available for hangouts. And large public spaces would be fine too, but it always feels like there are strict social rules around public spaces, like not being loud and such. Karaoke is probably the only place I can think of where you can gather a large group of friends and be loud, which is why I think there is such a big karaoke culture - it’s not really just about the singing. But I wish there were non-singing versions, if that makes sense.

Anyways, so earlier when I had sent Steven out on a shopping errand, it was indeed for groceries, but more importantly, it was for ping pong balls and cups. He said that he had to go to 4 different stores to find the ping pong balls, but he ultimately succeeded, so huge props to him. We set up the apartment for ring of fire/rage cage/stack cup/every single person in the world calls it something different I swear. I was nervous at first that people wouldn’t be into it, but it was a huge hit, and then the rest of the night continued with everyone introducing their own favorite drinking games, including Japanese ones introduced by Shiho (we played one called “Yamanote Sen” (the JR Yamanote Line), which is kind of like “categories” in King’s cup). At 11:30, most people had already shuffled out, but a few people stayed. Once 1 am rolled around, it suddenly occurred to me - these people missed the last train (usually at midnight). “What are you going to do?” I asked them. “Eh, catch the first train at 5 I guess,” they replied. Oh shit, the realization suddenly hit me - Tokyo house parties are binary, you either kick everyone out at 11:30, or you accept your fate as a party host and you must keep the night going until 5am. In theory people can take taxis, but it seemed like everyone was just fully down to stay in my place. I had absolutely no problem with people staying the night, but I was getting really freaking sleepy at 3am since my bedtime is usually 10pm, but I had to force myself to keep going for my guests. At this point, 3 of the 5 of us were fully passed out on the ground, and it was just me and my friend Kirsten left playing board games and chatting together.

Ended up spending the next 36 hours cleaning, but it was totally worth it. Couldn’t have asked for a better friendsgiving. (We even had a short-lived fireplace made of bread!)

Oh, and one final thing. I had two separate shipments from Costco (which again, is an hour drive away), went to the fancy department store grocery shops to source specific ingredients, and ended up buying enough food for 12 people and had leftovers for myself for over a week which I wasn’t even able to finish. The total for all the food came out to about $100 USD, which is less than what I spend on just myself for groceries for a week in SF. Crazy.

---

*One more note on this: the food situation has been especially difficult because I’ve been trying to change my lifestyle completely - working out more/taking on some more serious training, and wanting to diet properly and ideally lose weight. But “easy” protein sources and recipes that I find on the internet just aren’t as readily available here. It’s already difficult for me to take on this new lifestyle, each bit of added friction is more mental load on achieving my goals.

**I’m definitely more of a day or moment-of planner, so this behavior was completely insane to me when I first came to Tokyo. I’d ask people if they wanted to hang out, and they’d throw out a specific date and time like weeks to a month in the future, which honestly felt insulting, as if they didn’t want to see me. This was so frustrating at first because my schedule was so empty and I couldn’t do anything about it. Then, after making more friends and joining various communities, my schedule actually started filling up quite a bit weeks in advance, and now I’ve become the very thing I initially found completely unfathomable. For what it’s worth, I do have the ability to carve out a few hours of my day on short-notice if I really want to hang out with someone, but most people do get relegated to the weeks-long timeline. And also, I probably have the most flexible schedule out of anyone given my low strict time commitments (i.e. I’m not working a 9-5 job, or more realistically, a 7-7 job if you include commute and other random Japan working BS), so it makes sense that I would have more free time than the average person.

***Wolt (the Costco delivery app) only allows buying 1 fresh rotisserie chicken per order, and even more interestingly, Costco sells refrigerated leftover rotisserie chickens but for more money than the fresh ones. Truly a loss leader. As seemingly wasteful as it was, I did have to make two separate orders, but I think it ended up working out perfectly.