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Food news
Two articles in today’s news: Police raid firm in Mister Donut caseGov’t to abolish Food Agency The juxtaposition generates amusing ideas about what the Food Agency is doing. Covert food ops, no doubt.
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Denzuin
Ack! It’s 11:45 in the morning and haven’t blogged yet today. I’ve been caught up in writing an article and answering e-mail. Now I have to leave to go wave a dead chicken at MJ’s computer so forgive me if all I give you today is a photo series. This is Denzuin, an old and…
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Children’s procession
As we prepared to leave the house yesterday morning, we heard drumming echoing around the neighborhood. “Hey, let’s go find that!” I said. I’m always interested in local festivals. As it turns out, the drumming came to us. We left the building, we saw a parade of children and parents pulling a little shrine at…
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Caution, subtitles
In video stores in Japan, foreign movies make up the bulk of films for rent. And they come in two varieties: dubbed in Japanese and subtitled in Japanese. Which means the unwary English speaker sometimes ends up with a subtitled movie where the original language isn’t English. As an example, we rented Jackie Chan’s Accidental…
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Tax office efficiency
Yesterday I went to the tax office; I needed to pick up a copy of a form I’d failed to fill in at tax time. I pondered for a moment over which office to enter–the none of the complicated kanji combinations on the directory in the lobby exactly matched the one on my letter–and finally…
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Tropical tastes
I think we’re in for a tropical summer. First, Mango Colon. Now the candy shelves are crammed with tropical fruit flavored goodies: Pineapple KitKat is pretty tasty. The pineapple flavor is strong and a little plastic, but not bad. I like KitKat and this is a nice change. Mango Cream Pocky is excellent. Pocky is…
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BSE again
Just when I was starting to think it might be safe again, another Hokkaido cow tested positive for BSE. It’s been five or six months since the last known mad cow. Good thing I’m not overly fond of beef. But I was looking forward to some yummy yakiniku on our grill this summer. Oh well,…
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While Snow
In a tiny alley bordering Kausuga 2-20, is the White Snow restaurant. The noren was out as we walked past at lunchtime yesterday, so we slid open the wooden door, ducked under the curtain and tried our luck. What a delight. It’s a classic place that could be 50 years old, or five. An L-shaped…
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Latte Disguised
You know Latte, Sony’s cute white Aibo pet. Meet LonLon–Latte dressed as a panda to promote Suntory’s oolong tea. Suntory’s gone all out with its LonLon campaign website devoted to silly Flash games, clips from the TV commercials, a contest to win a keitai strap and some very kawaii LonLon wallpaper.
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Translating interview
Translation is slow and painstaking work. Not my favorite, but I’m faced with an e-mail full of Japanese answers to my English interview questions. It’s easy enough to get the general meaning of text by reading for the nouns and verbs. but the nuances are in all of the joining phrases and particles. Using ga…
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