After enjoying our time in LA immensely earlier this year we were glad to have a chance to get back there for the Thanksgiving holiday. The price for the flight was right (free - thanks to getting bumped last year) so we jumped at the chance. And we had a great time.

LA feels so comfortable to us in so many ways, not the least of which is the weather. How great it is to 75 degree weather all year round?? But we also like it because it is like a piece of all the Asian countries we have had a chance to visit to this point. All the Asian countries have sizeable immigrant communities here and it is a lot of fun to see those foods we have gotten a taste for over the years to be so readily available.

For the first time we went to Little Tokyo. I think to this point we had kind of spurned the area knowing we almost always going back to the real thing, so why mess with the imitation. But this time our only prospect was going back to Michigan where there is even less of a chance of coming across things Japanese. So we took full advantage stuffing ourselves with Japanese treats (daikomanju and sakura mochi), buying Japanese groceries (Japanese curry blocks, mirin, nori, among other stuff) and topped it all off with a bottle of our favorite Japanese drink, umeshuu. The umeshuu we introduced my parents to and they were so impressed they insisted that it would be too dangerous to take the plane and graciously agree to finish with the two of them.

More fun was had in Aliveras, the original Hispanic neighborhood of LA, where we had more treats and enjoyed shopping for street vendor bargains.

Also making LA real homey is staying with my parents. We always have a great time catching up and conversing about what is going on in our lives.

The Thanksgiving meal itself was a real treat too. It was our first in five years. Wow, what a lot of food. We got back our taste for cranberries and stuffing and had to admit that pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream may not be an aethestic masterpiece but it sure tastes darn good.

After a week, we weren't ready to to (I was scheming of way to stay till April), but when it was time we were glad to be heading back to Muskegon and our own little home!!