The Ebb and Flow of Friends Abroad

A holiday dinner can bring it into focus

There comes a time in a life spent abroad when the loss of friends becomes apparent. I don’t mean loss as in loss of life but rather the come-and-go nature of expat relationships.

You make a good friend, he then goes back. A neighbor family gets transferred to Dubai. A girlfriend restarts a career in Hong Kong. Everyone not a native is on a visa—a big temp pool.

When I moved outside the United States in my 20s a life abroad meant endless adventure, challenge, and stretch. Surviving was work, but there was a joy in the uphill climb and mystery.

There’s still much of that. But I think it was in my 30s or 40s when I realized that a downside of moving outside your national borders is the constant work of building new friendships as older friends “moved back” or onto the next opportunity.

Hey, a pull of the rug comes with the territory. We all notice it outside home shores.

I’m thinking of these challenges this morning. While I haven’t had a “move back” among my friends in a year, I cherish increasingly the long relationships that continue to hold unchanged.

Today Toru and I will be going to a Thanksgiving dinner at another American friend’s place in our neighborhood. We have known him and his Japanese husband for two decades I’d say. They are one of those friendships that have endured despite Japan’s ever-beckoning revolving door.

There will be turkey today. Huzzah! I love all roasted birds. The American half of the pair comes from a “real” Thanksgiving place, Minnesota, so there will also be a full range of sides like cranberry sauce, stuffing, grilled veggies, and potatoes.

Toru is making crab pilaf and I will be ensuring there are several bottles of Shiraz/Grenache on the table. We will come home with stained teeth if I have any say in the matter.

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Thanksgiving used to be a holiday that made me feel distinctly American. I didn’t think of the pilgrims sitting down to a mythical friendship feast but rather something simpler. Thanksgiving is a meal that we do.

If I’m honest with myself however I barely feel American anymore. I’m a passport holder, I vote, I still can’t switch the channels away from either the Wizard of Oz or the Grinch. But identifying right out of the gate post as American is no longer a thing.

That’s not a comment on my nation’s “struggles” of late, but rather just what happens, I believe to anyone, when you live and work and buy a house and raise dogs and plant trees in another country so long.

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For the past decade or so I identified Thanksgiving with Pete, a long-time friend and confidante who moved back to the States a year ago.

Pete was a professor and admin guy at a U.S. university here, and he reached retirement age. (Clever man, he also invested early in a few Bay Area and LA County properties back when normal people could do such things.) Today Pete is a whip-smart and jolly gay man who loves French white wine, gossip and laughter, and Asian art. But back in the 60s he was a very serious-looking heterosexual hippie from the Haight area of San Francisco. I saw the Polaroids.

For the past decade, Pete had a yearly Thanksgiving lunch/dinner at his apartment in Tokyo. But his meals never featured gravy. It was the oddest thing. A perfectly roasted turkey, amazing potatoes, stuffing, vegetables, homemade cranberry sauce, and even pumpkin pie, but gravy did not make an appearance.

Pete’s banning of gravy aside, I miss those meals dearly.

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So where does Thanksgiving stand here among the greater Japanese population?

It never gained even a toehold. Ask any Japanese and his answer will be quick, an almost rote recitation: turkey smells. I guess for a nation that can detect (and grade) minute differences among raw slices of tuna fat, yes, turkey meat in comparison does carry an earthy punch.

There’s also the rather significant issue of the entire nation owning nothing larger than Hitachi toaster ovens for baking.

Anything wrong with this image?

So Thanksgiving is safe here for now. The expats will coalesce at friends’ places (that have real ovens) and we will make our meals from ingredients we can find in the “Expat” supermarkets.

This year I will in particular toast friends, knowing the natural ebb and flow of a life abroad can mean sudden changes no one could have predicted.

And I wish everyone, wherever you are in the world reading this, a wonderful holiday season.