Happy Big Chicken Day

Home on the Island for Thanksgiving, and it's raining in a way that it never rains in Vancouver. Of course Dad is cooking turkey dinner. This holiday feels a little more exciting this year as it's Kenji's first Thanksgiving. At the moment Mom is in the dining room explaining the intricacies of pie forks, salad forks and turkey forks to him while Kenji plays selections of Japanese boy-band music on his IPod for Mom (no word on what she thinks of that yet). Dad is in the kitchen stuffing the turkey.

Which, coincidentally, we have to keep secret. Kenji explained about a month ago, when we introduced the concept of Thanksgiving, that turkeys are never eaten in Japan. In fact, they are protected. From what we understood, turkeys were one of three species of bird that are protected there. Kenji professed that he would NOT be able to eat turkey. Today we were having the conversation again, and we said, "Kenji, what are the three birds that are protected in Japan?" Kenji looked at us, sighed, and said, "I TOLD you. Turkey, turkey and turkey."

Oh. So it's not three species of birds. It's three birds, total. Three turkeys, to be exact. So it's like, REALLY bad that we're making Kenji eat turkey now. Definitely NOT a photo we want to send home to his Mom and Dad.

So, as of today, it's not Turkey, it's Big Chicken. Dad announced that he was going to stuff the Big Chicken, and has warned Kenji not to come in. None of us are mentioning the T-word but rather exclaiming how excited we are for the Big Chicken. Kenji asked how much the bird weighed and Dad replied, "21 pounds." "Wow," said Kenji. "That's a BIG CHICKEN."

Yes, yes, it's Big Chicken. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.