Find My Gingerbread Man: A Holiday Contest

The Americans hosted the final JAW event for 2010, a genteel tea party at Mindy's house overlooking the Navy base and Tokyo Bay.

The party was an oasis in the midst of the usual holiday frenzy overseas military bases cram into the first two weeks of December, before school lets out and nearly a third of the personnel depart for home or exotic vacation destinations. But an anti-holiday party did not mean we completely turned our backs on Christmas. Heavens no. We played Christmas bingo and decorated gingerbread men.

The first person who correctly guesses the cookie I created wins a 60th anniversary Peko-chan Christmas treat box adorned with a combination cell phone charm/finger puppet. Anonymous submissions will not be considered.

Cookie #1

Cookie #2

Cookie #3

Cookie #4

One of the party hostesses, a modern day Grandma Crippen, whipped up 45 reversible bags that were filled with treats and passed out as bingo prizes. Everyone eventually won a bag. I plan to admire mine for a few weeks and then pass it along to one of you as soon as I dream up another contest.

"Guess the year Kathy will finish Ulysses" has strong potential as the clock winds down on 2010.

More Cookie Flavors

Reiko presented me with a box of tiramisu-flavored mushroom-shaped cookies while we were exploring Sankeien Garden last month. I'm hoarding them until Kate arrives in mid-December.

Reiko also told me about a new shop in Mikasa Arcade on Blue Street that sells all types of Japanese treats. Mike, Matt, and I poked our heads in the door on our way home from Coco Curry the other night and immediately spotted a display of mushroom-shaped cookies in yet another flavor: caramel. Very tasty.

These cookies might be our only holiday treats this year since the Commissary ran out of Hershey's unsweetened cocoa a couple of weeks ago. According to my favorite cashier, the next shipment might not arrive until after the holidays. Unsweetened cocoa is an essential ingredient in my fudge so I am even crankier than usual although I must confess it's a bit of a relief to decline all those requests to contribute baked goods for various holiday parties. If I was nicer, I guess I could donate a few boxes of caramel-flavored mushroom-shaped cookies. But then what would I send you for Christmas?

Organization & Lack Thereof Contest(s)

Aren't organized people fascinating? My mother was organized, I have a sister-in-law who could give Mom a run for her money, and here in Japan there's Mimi.

I nearly tore a muscle congratulating myself when I woke up at 3:00 am Friday morning. Patting myself on the back as I skipped down the stairs to start the coffee, I chortled "Way to go, Self! Great job! You have altered your sleep cycle without even trying so it will be easy-breezy to catch that bus to the Seto Pottery Fair at 5:00 am tomorrow morning." Yes, three days into Southern Swing, I was already talking out loud to myself. Sometimes I pretend I'm conversing with Matt but he hasn't removed that headset in three years.

When the caffeine kicked in six hours later (that would be 9:00 am), I remembered I was going to Seto on Sunday rather than Saturday. Sticking with this topsy-turvy schedule for 48 more hours would be a challenge. Sticking with anything for 48 hours is not exactly how I define myself. What could get me to fall asleep by 9:00 pm on a Saturday night? Which book should I take to read on the bus, five hours each way? Working through thorny problems like these depletes all the organizational fuel in my tiny tank.

Fortunately, the 7-11 store just outside the base is carrying the jumbo-size Kirin autumn brew. Say goodnight, Kathy, but put the Evanovich book next to the front door first.

One of my children forgot to take a coat on a middle school ski trip some years ago. In the middle of January. Something like this would never happen to one of Mimi's kids.Five days before the pottery fair she was making detailed plans, free associating the advantages and disadvantages of wheeled suitcases versus backpacks to tote our potential purchases. Snacks for the bus! Plenty of water! Pillow? Blanket? Don't forget bubblewrap and old towels to protect our treasures during their bumpy ride home in the bowels of the bus.

Neither our old towels nor any of our blankets have caught up with us yet. I considered borrowing Matt's quilt but, well, he was wrapped up so tightly at 4:45 am that I couldn't figure out how to quickly unroll the quilt without sending him flying into the closet or out the window.

While I'm deciding which Seto pottery pictures I can post without ruining any/someone's Christmas, you can duke it out for a taste of those choco-bana cookies featured the day before last. You get two shots at the cookies:

1) Name the sister-in-law mentioned in the first paragraph (voting for yourself is always appropriate per my mother).
2) Identify the offspring who went skiing without outerwear

Simply Delicious

The Meiji Corporation is expected to report a sharp rise in sales for the third quarter. Although the confectionary firm has dozens of products on the market, an anonymous source within the company credits increased sales of mushroom-shaped cookies with the unanticipated profits. Further, most of the sales have occurred in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture.

"Since the middle of July our distributors on the Miura Peninsula - primarily grocery and convenience stores - have been restocking their cookie shelves hourly to keep up with the incredible demand. Meiji responded to this opportunity by test-marketing a new flavor in early September. The response to choco-banana has exceeded our expectations by a wide margin, particularly in Yokosuka City where a middle-aged American woman has been spotted giving our cookies to security guards stationed at the entrances to the U.S. Navy base."

Morticia's Magical Mystery Tour

It would be such a shame to let my Smithsonian training go to waste so this week I introduced my new tour, "Let's Explore a Japanese Grocery Store!" My hairstylist, Kumi, earned a big tip for helping me weigh the relative merits of the grocery store in the Daiei Mall and the one in the basement of Seiyu Department Store. From now on, though, I'm not going to raise any thorny questions until AFTER Kumi rinses out the color, at least from my eyebrows.

The first tour was for two hospital spouses who arrived in Japan this summer just a few weeks before the Navy moved their sponsor to another country. "I need something called mirin for a recipe I want to try," one of them said as she glanced at a list in her leatherbound organizer. "There are several ways to find what you need in a Japanese grocery store," explained the tour guide. "Allow me to demonstrate my two favorite methods."

• Tour guide positions herself in the center of an aisle, gazes steadily at the fourth shelf, furrows brow, and scratches head. Tour guide expects a nice Japanese lady to ask if she needs help but they all trip over each other to vacate the aisle, murmuring something that sounds a lot like "Why is Morticia Addams staring at the soba noodles?"
• Tour guide approaches a clerk stocking nearby shelves. "Sumimasen, mirin? Mee-ren? Mere-en? My-reen?" The clerk leads tour guide and hospital spouses to another aisle and points out 17 different varieties of mirin which comes in a bottle and looks an awful lot like urine.

Having instilled confidence in her charges, tour guide wanders around the store looking for something to buy because the final module of her tour, the Grand Finale if you will, is "Paying for Your Purchases" which requires a prop or two. What better prop than a box of mushroom-shaped cookies? Back home, without an audience, she takes another look at the cookies she bought.

Hmmm. This box seems a little larger than the ones I usually buy. It IS larger!
Why are these pictures posted sideways? I have no idea. I also don't know why I can't type next to the pictures today. Just touch your left ear to your left shoulder and keep looking. Did you notice that the mushroom caps are both brown and white on the box above?

There sure are a lot of little pictures on the side of the box.

I think I bought a Make Your Own Mushroom-Shaped Cookie Kit! Those look like little vials of white and regular chocolate, a mold, a bag of cookie stems, and a box.

It looks like all I need to do is heat water to 50 degrees Centigrade. How hot is that? How would I know? I'm a Fahrenheit person. But there's a little cloud over the spout so let's assume we're supposed to boil some water. And we need a bowl and crayons. Why do we need crayons?

Elementary, my dear Watson. According to the directions on the back of the box, we need the crayons to color the little box that's inside this box.

This is really cool. When's your next tour?

Sorry, you missed it. I took two line spouses (line means regular Navy as opposed to doctors, dentists, lawyers, chaplains, and supply officers) on a tour Friday afternoon. One has lived in Japan for two years but (a) did not know there is a grocery store under Seiyu and (b) had never heard of mushroom-shaped cookies.

Un-be-lievable.

The Price of Freedom

The USS Blue Ridge docked in Yokosuka shortly before noon yesterday. For the Seventh Fleet Staff, people like Mike, it was a normal working day so I didn't stroll over to the pier to watch the ship come in this time. For those of you who might wonder about such things, Mike's normal work week includes a briefing every Saturday morning but he and the other senior officers are allowed to skip the Sunday morning briefings.

By way of contrast, this sign shows the typical work week of a shore command here and back home.

The disparity in working hours might strike you as a bit unfair but the Navy is aware of this inequality and provides extra compensation for sailors assigned to sea duty. Mike's "sea pay" amounts to a whopping $100/month.

Just as I was skipping out the door to squander that bonus on mushroom-shaped cookies for you, Mike asked me for the checkbook. "I need to pay my monthly mess bill." "What's that?" "The Navy charges me $200/month for meals on the ship." Math wizard that I am, it took me less than a millisecond to calculate that this job is costing us $100/month. (One of us, of course, is delighted to be getting three square meals a day for the first time in years.)

If you happen to overhear someone questioning the price of freedom, you can tell them from me that it's $1,200/year.

More Cookies

I went to Kamakura to catch up with Kyoko and Tsuneko, my Japanese book club ladies. From our house to the JR train station is a 30-minute hike in flip-flops, my footwear of choice now that I've worn through the soles of my brown flats.

Arriving at the station 10 minutes ahead of my train, I popped into the convenience store in search of a little towel to mop the sweat from my brow. These little towels are de rigeur in this part of the world. (Before he deployed Mike graciously posed with his One Piece towel to illustrate this point.)

I not only found a towel but, even better, spotted the tiny burger cookies Bridget let me sample two years ago. Although I had searched high and low for my own supply of these cookies, I had always come up empty-handed.



The teaspoon was Matt's idea to help you grasp the size of the cookies. The filling is bourbon-flavored caramel.

The faux sesame seeds are a nice touch.

Our First Winner

And you didn't even know there was a contest, did you?

Catherine Lefere Sykes should start checking her mailbox for 10 boxes of mushroom-shaped cookies when the weather cools down, probably early October. We don't want those little mushroom caps to melt in transit. Cathy was the first - and, so far, only - relative/friend to request our stateside/Skype telephone number.

In other breaking news, Mike cut short his leave (vacation) by two weeks because the housing office can't let us have a house until he reports for duty. He donned his uniform this afternoon and caught a bus to the USS Blue Ridge to check a bureaucratic box then immediately went back on leave (vacation), carefully hanging that uniform back in the closet under close supervision.

Tomorrow we'll complete the paperwork (including a checklist of loaner furniture we'll need until our stuff gets here in late September) and Friday we'll move out of the Lodge and into #13 Gridley. We'll either be rolling 12 pieces of luggage across the base, crossing our fingers that the Base Taxi dispatcher learns how to answer the telephone between now and Friday, or tossing broad hints at the Brenyos when they get back from Nikko Thursday night.

We waited two weeks for a house the last time we came to Japan. This time we expected to wait up to a year for base housing and landed a place in less than a week. Life is full of so many interesting plot twists, isn't it?

P.S. Have you noticed how upbeat and uncomplaining I've been so far?