Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s Thanksgiving, which means it’s time for a post dedicated to food!

We’ll start with my hunt for a dessert to bring to thanksgiving with the expats. I found lots of adorable Japanese sweets, like the pudding and brownies at CakePopo:

I’m a sucker for snacks with faces.

But it seemed, despite how much I enjoy red bean and tea flavored treats, more appropriate to go for traditional flavors. Pie is, as I discovered to some distress, not popular here (apple or otherwise). So I panicked and bought a cake.

It’s a tad excessive. And enormous. Note to self: next time, stick with wine.

The cake is supposedly a marron cake. What is marron, you ask? Excellent question. I haven’t the foggiest idea.

My consultation with Google suggests it’s some sort of glazed chestnut creation. That’s…sort of like pecan, right?

For my entertainment, the patisserie was packing up the last box of an order of 4,000 trenchcoat cookies for Burberry.

I’m impressed. That’s an awful lot of hand-decorated cookies.

Moving on to other foods, here’s an example of one of the finer base-side burger joints:

It’s called the 7th Fleet Burger. It’s unfortunate that they ran out of room to stick it with the American flag toothpick; someone might mistake it for another country’s signature burger!

A nod to one of the more iconic impacts of the US Navy on Japanese cuisine: this is considered Japanese-style curry, but it started as a twisted version of the local curry, made just for the sailors. In Yokosuka, they still call it navy curry.

Speaking of curry, the Indian food is amazing. I haven’t decided if the naan problem is another side effect of proximity to hungry 19 year old Americans, or if this is just normal for naan. I’ve been told you can get cheese naan, only instead of cheese sprinkled on top, it’s filled with mozzarella, like a grilled cheese naanwich.

Other seasonal changes that delight:

So long, peppermint, cinammon, and gingerbread, for strawberry shortcake is the flavor of the season!

I still haven’t received a satisfactory explanation on the origins, but then again, the go-to Christmas dinner is KFC. (People will put in orders a month in advance!) Some things just can’t be explained.

Happy turkey and stuffing day to everyone state-side!