The Viking

Yesterday I went to my father-in-laws place of work, Sendai Hotel, for an excellent and expensive buffet. It was fantastic to say the least. All of the food was really high quality, and plus there was unlimited beer to drink. I drank almost 4 litres!

They also had some carnival like games. I found out that I’m a crack shot with a cork gun in the target shooting game. Even after ingesting large amounts of beer. Now you might be wondering why I called this post “The Viking”. Well Japanese people don’t usually say buffet, they call it a viking. No doubt due to it’s links to the Swedish tradition of smorgasbord.

Watermelon

What do people in Japan do during the hot summer? They go to the ocean and try to hit watermelons with baseball bats while blind folded.

While this all seems lioke good fun, it also seems quite dangerous, with some kids wildly swing away in any direction.

Giant

Down in Kobe they’re build a life size statue of the famous anime robot Tetsujin 28, also know as Gigantor in North America. I have to say it’s looking pretty good so far. After it’s finished I might have to go see it someday. Check it out in the video.

I love old style robots.

Combo

I got this the other day at the supermarket. It’s called Doritos Combo. What it is, is a combination of two different flavors of tortilla chip. This particular one is “Roast Shrimp” mixed with “Garlic”. It tasted good, but I found it hard to differentiate between to two flavors. I think they had merged while jumbling around in the bag.

Coolest Robot Ever!!

Check out this old toy robot. Wait what’s that in his hand?

It seems that Omnibot 2000 has a taste for the hard stuff. Not only that he’s also programmed to pour his own. The pictures below also illustrate his excellent beer pouring technique. Just check out the nice head on that beer. Well done Omnibot 2000!

One wonders who this toy was made for? Made for an extravagant salary man with some 98,000 yen (approx. $980) to burn. The drinking tray also costed an additional 18,000 yen (approx. $180). Expensive!

New PC

This week I got a new netbook. An Asus Eee PC 1000. It’s great because it’s very light (just 1 kilo), and easy to bring along. I chose this one because of the great reviews that it got.

The screen is 10 inches, it has 1 gig of memory, a 160 gig hard drive, 802.11n Wifi, and a 1.66ghz processor. Good for what I use PCs for (internet, media, etc.).

Plus the really great part is the battery last for around 7 hours. It’s the first time I’ve used a laptop that didn’t have to be plugged in after an hour. It had Windows XP in only Japanese on it, but some hackery on my part fixed that up and now it’s completely in English. The best part is, it only cost me 30,000yen ($300)! How can you beat that.

BBQ

Last weekend on Sunday we went to Marumori with our friends to have a BBQ. I made homemade hamburgers for everyone. You would be surprised at how hard it is to find hamburger buns in Japan. Anyways you can see in the  photo (taken by my friend Hiromi on her cell phone).

I’m cooking so fast my arms are a blur! After we ate we went down to the river and took a nice cool swim.

It felt great, since it was super hot that day. It was a fantastic day!

Moto Compo

I found these scans of an old brochure for the “Moto Compo” scooter. As the brochure states, it’s a “trunk” bike.

What this means is it can fold up and fit in the trunk of your car.

Why didn’t this great idea catch on? Well take a look at the guy in the picture below riding it.

Would you be caught dead riding a Moto Compo? I certainly wouldn’t. Anyways, I love the crazy 80’s styles. It’s funny how Japanese ads often use white people to sell cars or scooters. Especially ones that would never be sold in western countries.

By the way, click on the photos to enjoy their full splendor.

Plum Mitsuya

Here’s a nice refreshing drink for the summer time. It’s plum flavoured Mitsuya cider. The flavor is quite good, almost like drinking a non-alcoholic plum wine.

Did you know that What is commonly known as a Japanese plum actually isn’t a plum, it’s a type of  apricot. There’s your fact for the day!

Three Sheets

I just discovered this show thanks to a forum thread on GAF. It’s called “Three Sheets”. Basically it’s a travel show where the host Zane Lamprey goes to different countries to sample the local alcoholic beverages. It’s really fun to watch him drink tons of stuff, get totally drunk, and act strange in public. He’ll drink anything, especially weird stuff (as pictured below).

You can watch all of the episode of season one and two on Joost for free, and for all of you possible ex-pat viewers in Japan, this site does work (not like Hulu, which blocks other countries). There’s even an episode in Japan where he goes on a sake binge, and then sumo wrestles with a random stranger in a bar. So enjoy!