I found this on my desk one day, a souvenier of a co-worker’s trip to somewhere over summer break:

Wow… chocolate sand!  It’s hard enough to get M&Ms engineered so that they melt in your mouth and not in your hand… chocolate bits the size of sand grains must therefore be very subject to melting.  But imagine the possibilities!  Remember the dark obsidian sand beaches of Hawaii with new chocolate sand!

Or was it going to be actual chocolate-coated sand?  A new way of getting your roughage?  A gritty treat?

Imagine my disappointment when I unwrapped it and found… a chocolate sandwich cookie.

My disappointment disappeared when I ate it, though.  It was yummy.

More to come.

During Silver Week, we had a nice visit from some friends of Masako’s who live in the Tokyo area.  As Japanese are wont to do, they brought a little gift with them… a box of little sponge cakes, rather like Twinkies except much better, filled with tasty and fruity banana creme.  Very yummy.

Then I examined the wrapper more closely, and learned just how badass these little cakes were…

“People gather to TOKYO from here and there with memories of their home.  And then, TOKYO gets everyone’s home town.  TOKYO BANANA.”

Good grief, it’s worse than I thought.  I knew Tokyo was a big, bad city… a veritable Godzilla among the tiny hamlets and sleepy villages of the Japanese countryside… but I had no idea it was ACTIVELY CONSUMING everyone’s home town!  Imagine the pure-hearted, apple-cheeked waifs dreaming of big city success who go there, only to have TOKYO GET their home town, actively ripping the cherished past from their unsuspecting brains!

Or perhaps it is literal… Perhaps TOKYO detaches itself from its Kanto Plain bedrock and goes on an active rampage, swallowing towns whole, adding their populations to its already burgeoning numbers… AAAAAHHHHH!

Luckily, I seem to remember my home town just fine after consuming three of four of these yummies.  Maybe because my home town is sufficiently large.  Or because there is an ocean between it and TOKYO.  Or maybe because I didn’t go to Tokyo recenly enough for it to GET my memories.

You can bet that if I go there again, though, my psychic shields will be at full strength!  No more messing around!

TOKYO BANANA!!!!!!!!!

More to come…

With limited building space in Japanese cities, this sort of thing is rather common.

Seen in the vicinity of Osu Kannon, Nagoya:

Here you can see where a traditional peaked-roof house has been torn down right next to its neighbor, which you can see is one more example of the lovely Soviet Bloc copycat architecture that sadly dominates the Japanese cityscape.  Now an hourly parking lot, the only evidence of the house’s existence is the eidolon it left on its pal.

The wooden spacers that kept the two buildings apart by about four inches also remain.  Those windows on the remaining building that would have opened directly into the side of the one that got torn down?  Must have been a lovely view…

More to come!

This has been endlessly blogged about, written about, and generally overkilled in the media, so I just wanted to go on record and show everyone that it does, indeed, exist and is not an urban myth or exaggeration:

Yes, folks, that is a 6,300 yen cantaloupe, which, using exchange rates current at the time of writing, comes out to $69.04.  So who the heck would pay a hair under seventy bucks for a melon?

It’s a gift fruit, so the prestige is in the fact that it’s perfect, has been babied during its growth, has never hit the dirt, and because the people getting it know how much they paid for it.  I personally would rather get a king-size box of chocolate truffles or something, but hey.

So the idea is to have something that has a function (in this case, it is edible) that is an expensive gift because the fact that its expensiveness is the reason it is impressive, and thus makes a good gift, etc.  Circular logic is a fun thing.  Thus, my plan is to introduce other gift ideas to the Japanese market… things that are useful, but can be expensively and impressively crafted to make good gifts.  I’m thinking of a gold-plated clothespin or a mink dishcloth for starters.

The thing is, these are by no means the most expensive gift fruits I’ve seen, either… I’ve seen melons twice as expensive as these…

I also want to point out that you can go to any farm market in Japan, or a stand on the roadside, and get a perfectly yummy melon (albeit one that has a dirty or irregular exterior) for about four or five bucks… still a little pricey, but not as much as dinner for two at a pretty good restaurant (or dinner for a dozen at Denny’s).

More to come!

Photo by Jen (my sister!)

I see a lot of this kind of thing…

This sign is for a construction firm.  I think what they are trying to say is, “We love working with wood, and we love working with people”.  Unfortunately, this is not a workable contraction of said sentiment.

More to come…

Photo by Meg (my sister!)

Oh, the numerololologicality of it all!
Just wanted to get a silly little post in to commemorate triple-9 day. Back with more real posts soon.

“We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.” -Oscar Wilde-

Here’s a clue for the folks at Glico, one of the major confectionary / soft drink manufacturers in Japan, most famous for making Pocky…

Espresso is good.  Making a decaffinated espresso drink for folks on the go who don’t want to be awake all night might be a shrewd idea.  But when thinking of a name under which to market your decaf espresso, don’t do THIS…

Ah, D-presso.  It doesn’t give you a caffeine crash… it just brings you down.  Maybe if they added some Zoloft or something to the mix…

What makes it even better is the little blurb on the top:

You’re gonna need it, sucker.

More to come…

My smart, upwardly-mobile, stunningly beautiful sisters visited us last week.

Here they are standing outside our back door, in the rock garden I made.

In addition to being the wonderful girls that they are, they are doing Masako and I a huge favor by living in the bottom unit of our house in the States.  We didn’t have to rent it out to possibly scumbag tenants, and they are always there to take care of emergencies (like the basement flooding, last spring).  So our tiny apartment in Toyota became their tiny apartment in Toyota for six days.

We spent quite a bit of time in the countryside, driving in the mountains, going “up north” to Takayama, going to a hot spring (a bit TOO hot in the summer, even at high elevations) and generally having a good time.

One morning in a Family Mart convenience store in Takayama, we found these fun food items:  buns with various ingredients and enthusiastic Engrish:

First up is the “Egg Dog”.  I would like to know the process by which one could bite and NOT taste it. I’m also wondering if you’re supposed to chew it.  Is that implied, or should I not take a risk and merely follow the instructions to the letter?  But it doesn’t say to spit it out, either.  What do I do?!?!?!

Next up is the enigmatic “Tuna Corn Dog”.  Why the Japanese developed a penchant for putting sweet corn into / onto practically everything- muffins, pizza, spaghetti sauce, and even ice cream sundaes- is one of the most vexing of culinary mysteries.   Thus we get stuff like the tuna / corn dog.  Though it may indeed be juicy and mild, I’m not totally sold on the idea of tuna and corn producing any sort of “harmony”.  Maybe akin to a bad coffee shop folk group, but no more…

Ah, the Weiner Dog.  Across which is squeezed ketchup and mustard.  Then it sits in its plastic wrapper for months, like a Twinkie.  Eek.

More to come…

Naturally, I thought this was a joke when I first saw it…

Surely, a book called “How to Good-bye Depression: If you Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? Or Effective Way?” was nothing more than an “Engrish” photoshop job… but as it turns out, it is indeed a real book, and you can purchase it here.  Note that it also has an average review of 4 stars out of 5.  Not only that, but Hiroyuki Nishigaki has also written other books.

My guess is that the author self-published this after translating the whole thing with the help of either a.) Babelfish or b.) an inexperienced translator.

In any case, it’s a hundred times more wonderful that this is a real product.  Ass-clenchingly good.  Very moving.  Gotta pinch myself.  Etc.

Rant time!  Make that rambling rant time…

Masako and I often joke that NHK (the government-owned TV and radio network) is much more like Fox News than NPR or PBS or the CBC or BBC.  The tone adopted by NHK in most of its news and talk programs is similar to that adopted by a disturbing percentage of Japan’s high-level politicians… xenophobic, status quo, and most importantly, the idea that everything bad that happens to Japan is the fault of foreign meddling rather than the short-sighted, flawed policies of its own government.  It’s Us vs. Them, “Them” being the foreign ideas that are destroying the purity of Japan.

Sound familiar?

Japanese are raised with the idea that Japan is a unique place.  It is, but not in the way they think, and not in the ways they are taught.  You may have run across funny stories, like the one of the ski equipment manufacturer whose products were rejected on the grounds that “Japanese snow is different than Western snow”.  I myself have encountered otherwise intelligent and educated Japanese who truly believe that Japan is the only country that has four distinct seasons, the only country that has cherry blossoms, the only country that has cicaidas, etc. etc. etc., fill in your own blank.  This is cute and funny the first time you encounter it.  It becomes progressively more frightening the more you think of it.

The goverment of Japan has a vested interest in keeping this up.  It is one leg that props up the Japanese psyche, the other being the idea that the rest of the world is confusing, disturbing, and dangerous.  If they believe that Japan is the best, safest, and most advanced nation in the world, then people won’t go anywhere else to see differently, and won’t get any funny ideas about bucking the status quo.

This spills over in odd little ways, even on seemingly innocuous TV programs that are otherwise entertaining and educational.  Masako and I tuned in to a show that featured a house-building competition between three construction crews; one from the USA, one from the UK, and one from Japan.  They each had a lot in a fairly remote and pristine wooded area to build on, and the show focused on the design and execution of the three houses.  All well and good so far.

The U.S. crew built a southwestern-style home with contemporary components.  The Brits built a lovely brick cottage.  The Japanese created a contemporary with interior “traditional” components and a wood-clad exterior.  All were very nice.

There were problems along the way.  The U.S. and U.K. teams used Japanese building products, some of which were unfamiliar to them.  For example, the waterproof exterior stain turned out not to be waterproof.  It ran all over the place.  To me, this would seem to be an indictment of the product.  But the show managed to spin it into “foreigners ignorant of Japanese products” and then made a big deal of the fact that the Japanese crew came over to help them clean up the mess.  Okay, fine.  Whatever.

There were also some interesting claims made during the show.  The U.K. crew built several lintels in their house with decorative stained glass panels that could be opened for ventilation.  The show claimed that this sort of architecture was a Japanese invention.  Now, it is true that Japanese architects have been using lintels like this for a long time, usually decorated with carved wooden panels that admit air.  But I find it somewhat difficult to believe that this idea originated with the Japanese, and that somehow it made its way to pre-medieval England.  I seem to recall Roman and Greek architecture like this, and frankly it’s such a simple concept that it would be hard to determine who actually thought of it first.  If I am wrong, and someone can prove it, please let me know.  Otherwise, I’ll continue to believe it’s just one more morsel of BS being reported as fact, and move on.

The three houses were completed.  One thing I thought was very nice was that the houses were by no means huge and extravagent showcases- all were modestly-sized (two or three bedrooms) and not too obtrusive.   They were reviewed by a panel of experts.  The winner?  The Japanese house.  Upon review, I have to admit that I thought it was pretty darn nice, and if I got to choose one, I would likely choose it, if only for its outdoor bath.

But then the shark was jumped.  The idea was presented that Japanese housing was the best in the world.

The fact, however, is something the show did not bother to mention.  The fact is, a great many Americans and Brits can and do live in houses exactly as portrayed on the show.

Most Japanese, however, do not (and in fact cannot) live in a house like that shown on the show.  In the old days, Japanese houses were wood and paper, designed around a central support point or points, with sliding doors that would open to the outside, letting the outside in.  Today, many municipalities ban wooden structures like the one on the show because of fire hazards.  Due to lack of building codes (and the will and means to enforce them, caused by various unholy agreements between government and construction companies), most modern Japanese houses are flimsy and have no insulation whatsoever.  The floor plans have been Westernized, regardless of local weather, so you have houses with poor air circulation running air conditioners or space heaters 24/7 in a desperate attempt to keep the uninsulated interiors cool / warm (I don’t even want to know how much energy is wasted in this way).  Utility pipes are often simply tacked to the outside of buildings, resulting in a lot of unnecessary ugliness.

Japan’s old architecture is some of the most elegant, ergonomic, and downright beautiful the world has ever seen.  Nowadays, the landscape is blighted with eyesores that would look more at home in the old Soviet bloc, or perhaps a third-world slum, than in an ostensibly first-world industrialized nation.

More on this to come.