Labor Thanksgiving Day

Today is a holiday in Japan for Labor Thansgiving Day. Ayako and I just got back from a thanksgiving dinner at another teacher's house with a number of other teachers and friends. For the event, I made pumpkin (squash) soup (which turned out well) and tried to make pumpernickel bread (which didn't turn out well and so wasn't brought). Here's a photo of the soup I made and the people who came for dinner:

In other local news, I heard firetruck sirens going off at 4:30am this morning, but was too tired to get up to see what was happening. It turned out that there were 2 fires in my neighbourhood, which happened about 10 minutes apart from each other. One was at a Brazilian store near some apartments which got charred. The other was at an abandoned house, but unfortunately, the house next to it also caught fire. Luckily nobody was hurt in either one. The police came by in the afternoon asking questions if anybody knew anything since they suspect they might be due to arson.