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Hamster’s Lunch
Hamster’s Lunch. “Seed shape rice cracker and hamster figures will provide you a enjoyable tea time.” The box also explains that there are 12 different figures and each comes with a Hamster Facts card. The rice crackers are shaped like sunflower seeds and are made of 100% mochi rice, in case you should mistakenly think…
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2002 FIFA World Cup
The 2002 FIFA World Cup starts tomorrow. The papers are full of articles about hooligans and what’s being done to avoid trouble. Extra police are on alert, of course. To support that, pachinko parlor owners have agreed not to install any new machines during the World Cup because the law states that police must be…
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Container gardening
The joys of container gardening are not to be overlooked. On my tiny balcony, I’ve got a healthy dose of nature. And most of it is edible: mint, rosemary, sage, basil, marjoram, thyme, parsely, bay. What’s not edible is flowering: daisy, lavender, marigold, impatiens, pinks, petunia. It gets my attention every day. I water it,…
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Sapporo Lion Ginza
From the street, it’s pretty unremarkable, just another Sapporo Lion beer hall with a display of plastic food in a big, modern building. But stepping inside this place was a surprise. This beer hall was designed and built by Eizou Sugawara in 1934. It’s gorgeous. It’s an art deco cavern. At the far end, a…
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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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