Krispy Kreme madness

Hello, it's Shari's husband. I thought I'd just jump on for a minute to give an update on the Krispy Kreme situation (which I know is of the utmost importance to all of my wife's readers). There are still lines every day, and it seems to be getting worse.

I went there on Saturday the 16th, the day after it opened, at 9:30, and there was a line of twenty people, which grew to a hundred by noon. Two days ago, on Saturday the 23rd, I went again at 9:30 only to find over a hundred people already waiting. I find this significant because as most who live in Japan know, most shops don't open until 10:00, so people don't start shopping in earnest until around then.

On the 16th, I assume most of the people at KK were people just walking around Shinjuku a bit early, and decided to check out the new donut shop. But there's no way that a hundred people just happened to be in that area of Shinjuku on a Saturday morning, so it must be that they went there specifically to go to Krispy Kreme, knowing they'd have to stand in line. Why is beyond me, and the consistently long lines have mystifed my students as well. Anyway, I think this means that for the foreseeable future, there will be long lines all day long, except perhaps just after they open at 7:00 a.m. (And maybe even then, God only knows; I haven't checked.)

Note from Shari: Today it's rainy and dismal and I wonder if those lines are dampened a bit by this type of weather. Of course, neither my husband nor I wonders enough to check. ;-)

Christmas in Tokyo (2006)

A "Hello Kitty" papier mache figure at a tea shop in a Santa suit.

Since it's Christmas day, my husband and I decided to stroll around the neighborhood to see what the locals were up to. One thing we learned was that, by Christmas day, the holiday is essentially over for the Japanese because the commercial value has sufficiently diminished that it's far less worthwhile than the days leading up to the 25th. People have spent all the money they are going to on Christmas by this point. (As always, click any picture to see a much larger version.)

A Santa costume and various Christmas-themed headbands for sale at an accessories shop for young women and girls.

Last night, my husband passed by a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop and saw 40 people waiting in line to get their Christmas repast. He also saw the usual convenience store employees standing outside of 7-11 and others hawking Christmas cakes. Despite the fact that I've spent many Christmases in Japan, I've neither bought nor sampled a Christmas cake. I've asked my students if they usually have them and all of them say they do. One of them said the cakes are pretty poor quality as many of them are made far ahead of time, frozen, and then thawed before handing them over to customers.

Additionally, I've asked them if they give each other gifts and most adults do not. Most of them received one present on Christmas morning when they were children. Even if they had a tree, the gift was usually left near the futon. Most had trees though usually they were artificial. In the case of one of my students, she said her family had a real (about 4 feet tall) tree which they dug up and replanted every year so she had a rare experience with a live tree.


This sign was hanging in the shopping street we were walking along. It advertises a campaign where you could get chances to win either one of ten dinners for two at the Four Seasons Hotel or one of a hundred pairs of tickets for Disneyland or Disney Sea (hence the illustration of Santa next to a present with a dinner table and Mickey Mouse popping out of it). You could earn the chances by purchasing items from shops on this shopping street.


Our main goal in going out and about was to see what might be happening but our secondary goal was to visit the Baskin Robbins that had only recently opened up in the middle of the shopping street. I wanted to treat myself to some orange sherbet since no Japanese stores sell it and, hey, it's Christmas. My husband bought more properly festive blueberry gingerbread ice cream.

From previous experiences during Christmas, one thing we know for a fact is that every scrap that indicates the Japanese celebrate Christmas will vanish by tomorrow morning. It's like they are all set to self-destruct by midnight on the 25th. They're immediately replaced by traditional Japanese New Year's decorations so that the new cycle of sales can begin.


Addendum: I wanted to note I received a really lovely Christmas card from my friend Shawn on December 24th which helped boost my holiday spirit. I love the artwork as it reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes. I also like the joke. :-) Thanks again, Shawn.

Peanut Butter Cookies

This being the holiday season, I've been making more sweets than usual. Rest assured, I haven't been eating all the things I bake. Two days ago, I made about 6 dozen chocolate chip cookies and didn't eat one of them. Three days ago, I made just short of 6 dozen peanut butter cookies and didn't eat any of them either. In the case of the peanut butter ones, I'm not even tempted because I don't care for them. There's something about the texture that doesn't appeal to me. My husband, on the other hand, loves them and asked that I make a boatload for his students.

This recipe is very old and I have no idea where I got it. I can say that it's a huge hit with everyone who receives these cookies, including my former Japanese coworkers. My former boss told me he could sit down with a bag in front of the T.V. and consume large quantities of them.

These cookies are easy to make and probably a good recipe to try if you want your kids to help you make them. They aren't fussy (no dropping, rolling, or cutting) and the dough isn't sticky or troublesome. They're pretty much no fail as long as you measure properly and don't overbake.

This is also another recipe which requires no special ingredients though I will caution those who live in Japan not to use "peanutsu cureamu" and to be careful to buy actual peanut butter. Skippy is available in most Japanese markets which stock peanut butter and it works well. Additionally, do not use Japanese lard (commonly sold in tubes) as a substitute for Crisco. You can use "cake margarine" (keiki margarin I'd enter the katakana but I have no Japanese input on my PC) which is sold in the margarine/butter sections of supermarkets as a complete substitute for the combined Crisco and butter. There are different brands but you can distinguish it from bread spreads by the picture of a cake on the box. Inside the box, you get a light yellow block equal to one cup so you can substitute one entire box for the 1/2 cup of butter plus 1/2 cup of Crisco combined.

Peanut Butter Cookies recipe:

1/2 cup Crisco
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla

Cream the Crisco, butter, brown sugar, and white sugar using an electric mixer. Add the peanut butter and mix well. Add the eggs, salt, baking soda, and vanilla and mix again. Add half of the flour (1 1/2 cups) and mix once more until it is incorporated. At this point, you will have to abandon the mixer as the dough will get too thick for the motor to handle. Add the remainder of the flour (1 1/2 cups) to the mixture and mix it by hand.


It will be mixed completely when it comes together (as above) and resembles soft Play-doh. Also, it shouldn't stick to your hands.


Roll the dough into balls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. You can do it all at once or you can do it as you need to fill cookie sheets. I usually do it all at once so it's simpler once I start baking.


Place the balls about 2-2 1/2 inches apart on a baking sheet then press down with a fork to make a cross-hatch pattern (as above). Bake at 375 degrees F./190 degrees C. for 8-12 minutes until delicately brown around the edges. Allow them to cool for a minute or two on the cookie sheet before removing as they will be quite soft at first. Remove and cool on clean newspaper sheets (this absorbs oil). Makes 3 dozen. These cookies freeze very well.


This is what just shy of 6 dozen of these looks like. Since my cookie sheets are so small, it took 4 rounds with two sheets (one on the center and one on an upper rack) to get them all done and I was pretty worn out when it was over. If you also use two racks, be careful to rotate them at the midway point while baking so they cook evenly.

Depending on how carefully you roll the balls and how central your criss-cross marks are, these cookies can come out almost perfectly round. In fact, one of my former foreign coworkers seemed to imply that I hadn't made these cookies at home but rather bought them at a bakery because they were almost perfectly round. I explained to her that it was due to how they were made from round balls and squashed down but she still had an air of skepticism about the matter.

The Christmas Spirit (or lack thereof)

I wonder which present is for me?

The picture above is from Guild Wars. It's a screenshot of the game environment that was infused with Christmas as of December 21. The makers of the game know how to make the players feel special. In addition to the holiday motif that is added, you can take part in snowball fights, get drunk on eggnog, and collect candy cane shards and whole canes to be used for various purposes in the game.

This beats real life as neither eggnog nor candy canes can be had without a visit to a shop which specializes in selling to foreigners. In Tokyo, that's National Azabu Supermarket. It's sufficiently troublesome to go that one isn't inclined to go there unless there's a more compelling reason than seasonal treats. Also, there's no guarantee that they'll stock any particular item.

Mmmm. Tasty super-size gumdrops.

I wish I could say that the general atmosphere in Japan was 1/10th as good as what I get from a game. Spending Christmas in Japan is like being exposed only to the most commercial aspects of the holiday without any of the spirit-based aspects. I'm not talking about the religious angles as I'm no longer a Christian but rather about the emotional aspects.

While I'm fully aware that Christmas is very commercialized in the United States (and other western countries that celebrate it), there are usually some indications of emotional depth. People may be nicer at times or more helpful. You can perhaps even catch a whiff of the essence of the spirit of giving if you're lucky and not so mired in cynicism that you have the equivalent of a spiritual clothespin over your nose.

When I first arrived in Japan, I used to try and "make" a holiday for myself in spite of the shallow observance of it around me. I used to try and connect with people back home over the holidays and I'd decorate the apartment relatively lavishly. I'd go out of my way to make copious amounts of goodies for friends and coworkers. I'd special order a turkey expensively from the FBC deli and make a special meal.

After nearly a decade of sending out tons of Christmas cards and getting a smattering back, being around foreign coworkers who were indifferent to the holidays (or outright grumpy), having to work on Christmas day, and feeling increasingly disconnected from the U.S., I gave up. I can't even bring myself to take the decorations out of the closet this year, let alone put them up. The only thing I'm doing this year is make cookies for my husband to give his students and I'm having a lot of difficulty getting the energy to do that. I don't do it out of any sense of holiday spirit but mainly because I love my husband and want him to have the pleasure of doling out goodies to his students.

What I've learned is that there are limits to weaving a pocket of western culture in Japan and you hit them pretty hard around the holidays. There aren't really any Japanese holidays which have the same depth of sentiment as Christmas, not even among the Japanese themselves. In my lesson where I discuss every holiday throughout the year with students, none of them seem to have much of a serious affinity for any particular day although they do like the extended time off they get for New Year's vacation. So, it doesn't seem likely that I would be able to try to integrate myself more fully with the culture to find the sense I'm missing elsewhere.


It's rather depressing, to be honest. Still, at least I can run around with a bizarre spiky ice creature with an oddly happy-looking snowman head, drink virtual nog and get virtually drunk, and have virtual snowball fights. It's better than nothing, but not by much.

We Passed

As I mentioned before, one of my students is taking a course at a junior college on one of the military bases. I've been assisting her with her homework and she got her final grade a few days ago. I'm pleased to say that she got an "A" in the class though I'm not so happy that she feels my assistance makes this my grade rather than hers.

My student already has a Bachelor's degree in pharmacy from a Japanese school so she has academic experience but she had problems structuring her replies to essay questions. I'm not sure if her problem was related to having studied pharmacy in school and not having to approach tests from the viewpoint of offering opinions (rather than data or research details) or if it has something to do with how Japanese universities structure their tests.

Her main problem was that she didn't talk "on point" when she answered a question. She tended to offer tangential information which was about a similar topic but wasn't addressing the crux of the question. I tried to teach her to meander around the answer less and to simply get right to it.

To offer a more concrete example, she had a question about whether or not the age of criminal culpability ought to be reduced but rather than say that it should or shouldn't and why she felt that way, she talked about a case in Japan that compelled the Japanese government to lower the age of culpability from 16 to 14. While the case was interesting and related to the general topic, it didn't support any particular opinion.

Many of her lessons were spent with my trying to rework her replies so that her wandering around the point became examples for opinions and my helping her see how to address the question as stated. I'm not sure if she actually "got it" but she definitely got a lot better at getting closer to it by the end of the semester. I'm pretty confident that she'll need far less help next time.

I wonder if this is her particular issue or part of a larger tendency among Japanese people to be vague and indirect. One thing that her writing strongly reminded me of was the business letter sample homework that I used to correct for students at my former job. The students were told to accomplish two straightforward tasks; write a letter asking for details about a pair of trekking boots and ask a hotel that they had stayed at to look for a lost address book. In the case of the former, the students would often begin the letter with long, irrelevant personal tales of having to go hiking and needing good boots. In the case of the latter, they'd start off with extended apple polishing which came across as buttering up the hotel staff.

Even though students were explicitly told not to do these sorts of preambles that are common in Japanese letters, they did it anyway because they were uncomfortable getting down to business. The problem my student had wasn't exactly the same thing but both situations were reminiscent of taking the scenic route to the point.