Trying to Talk Turkey : Japanese Visitors Find Thanksgiving Feast a Curious Cuisine

Oxnard College instructor Al Alviar regarded the 50 young Japanese men and women in front of him--many groggy from jet lag--and launched into an explanation of how to make mashed potatoes.

“These are white potatoes,” he said, holding up a pot of steaming white mounds for all the cooking students to see. “This is best to mash when hot. When it is cold, no more, OK?”

All Friday morning, Alviar mashed, chopped and stirred his way through a speed-cooking demonstration of how to make a Thanksgiving dinner. As an interpreter translated into Japanese from the sidelines, he basted turkey, chopped lettuce for the salad, and rolled dough for the apple pie.

“When you roll, start from the middle of the dough, going out,” he told the quiet gathering of serious-faced students. Many of them scribbled notes in Japanese on copies of the English instructions Alviar had typed and photocopied as a teaching supplement.

But in the back of the classroom, Hidekazu Takahashi, 18, dropped his chin on his chest and dozed off. The demonstration was too many rows of seats away, he said later--and besides, he was tired. The group had just arrived from Tokyo the night before.

The trip to Oxnard is part of an annual weeklong tour of Southern California sponsored by the Nishi Tokyo Cooking College in Kodaira-Shi, Tokyo, a sister college to the Oxnard school. Last year, Alviar said, he taught the students to make a Mexican meal. Next year he might attempt an American-style roast beef dinner. “You know,” he said, “they can’t get that over there.”

The students--most of whom range from 15 to 25 years old--will visit Disneyland, Universal Studios and other tourist attractions. On Monday, they will give a Japanese cooking demonstration at a Little Tokyo Buddhist temple in Los Angeles, said Keisuke Tanaka, their principal.

For many of the students, the reason for the Thanksgiving meal was as much a mystery as American cooking methods. One young woman, asked by an interpreter why she thought Americans sat down to turkey dinners each November, answered: “Jesus Christ?”

After the interpreter told her the story of the first Thanksgiving, Mika Kashimura, 24, had questions. “What we’re eating, is this exactly what the Pilgrims ate?”

The students later sat down to a cafeteria-prepared version of Alviar’s demonstration meal, dining on turkey noodle soup, tossed lettuce salad, roast turkey with bread dressing and gravy, Virginia-baked ham with pineapple and raisin sauce, candied yams, buttered peas and carrots, cranberry sauce topped off with pumpkin and apple pies. And, of course, mashed potatoes.

Kashimura was also curious about what else people do to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. “At Thanksgiving, people just eat?” she asked.

Eating was enough, though, for Tetsuji Isono, 18, the most raffishly dressed of the properly attired group, with his rust-tinted hair and a fashionable, oversize mauve suit.

“It’s very good, very delicious,” he said, diving into some pumpkin pie after scraping his dinner plate clean.

Like his fellow students, Isono had never tasted turkey before--or candied yams or pumpkin pie. The turkey won rave reviews from most of the diners, though some students, accustomed to a lighter diet of mostly vegetables and fish, looked askance at the idea of consuming both turkey and ham in the same sitting.

“It’s strange,” said Satoshi Nakamachi, 15. “The dinner’s all meats.”

Nearby, classmate Akemi Sawano, 19, picked up a piece of candied yam with her fork and discussed it at the cafeteria table. “It’s very, very sweet--too sweet,” she said, echoing the sentiments of many of the students, who wondered about Americans’ apparent fondness for sugary foods.

For most of the group, Friday was their first full day ever in the United States. What they couldn’t get over, they kept saying, was the sheer size of it all.

“It’s big here,” said Fumyaki Sasano, 19, shaking his head in amazement. “Everything is big--the humans, the freeway, the city, the food, even the toilets.”

Even--added Isono, of the tinted hair--the ovens. As much as he likes turkey, he didn’t think he would try cooking the demo meal back in Tokyo.

“There’s no space,” he said, “to cook such a big turkey in our small ovens.”