Mexican Cratz

Cratz is basically just chunks of pretzels with a few almonds. What makes the different is the flavors they have. This one is notable for being “Mexican Salsa and Chicken” flavor. Usually Mexican flavors are uncommon in Japan. The only exception is Doritos, and Old El Paso taco kits. The snack itself was pretty delicious, and yes I did eat it with beer.

Dragon Quest IX

Today the next iteration in the Dragon Quest series, Dragon Quest IX, comes out in Japan. For a few weeks now poster and cloth banners have been everywhere. A Dragon Quest game is something of an event in Japan. Usually selling tons. In fact the pre-orders for the game supposedly passed the 2 million mark. The game looks super awesome.

Unfortunately I wont be able to play it until the English version comes out (and who knows when that’ll be). Until then I’ll have to be happy just watching this video. Just hear the theme song gets me excited!

Coco

One of my favorite restaurants in Japan is “Coco Ichiban” (not to be confused with the Coco’s family restaurant chain). It’s basically a Japanese curry restaurant. I mostly like it because the curry is good, you can get many different toppings, it’s fast, and it’s cheap.

Also it’s one of the few restaurants in Japan that is 100% no smoking (this is very rare indeed). They have menus in many languages, so even non-Japanese can comfortably order on their own. You can also choose your own level of spiciness, ranging from the mild level 1 to the fiery level 10. My goal is to try the level 10 someday. Currently I usually enjoy a level 5 (which is quite spicy in it’s own right). I highly recommend trying it sometime.

Nori

Here’s something I can guarantee you’ll never see in North America. Seaweed flavored Doritos! While seaweed flavored snacks are nothing rare in Japan, I’ve never seen it on a tortilla chip before. I have to say they were quite delicious.

Shiso

Here’s Pepsi’s special flavor for the summer. It’s Shiso Pepsi. Shiso is a Japanese herb tat is part of the mint family. So to understand the taste, imagine a mint flavored soda. It’s just OK tasting.

Canada Day

This is the hardest day to be away from Canada. I miss the crowds, the parties, and just everything in general about Canada. So I send 142nd birthday wishes to the greatest country in the world, Canada! I hope I can come and visit you soon.

Marginalized

Lately I’ve been interested in buying a video camera. I’ve never owned one before, and I thought it might be fun. Japan being the home to many great electronics companies, I thought it would be relatively easy to get a great one. I was totally wrong. It seems that some Japanese companies don’t like to make it easy for anybody except for Japanese people. Namely Sony and Sanyo. They nicely decided to not include any languages on their cameras except Japanese. This not only makes them extremely hard to use for some one who isn’t Japanese, but is extremely frustrating considering that the exact same cameras are available in other countries with several languages (including Japanese). I’m glad the clerk told me, I almost bought them.   Does that mean Sony and Sanyo don’t care about the roughly 2 million non-Japanese living here. Maybe. At least some companies are forward thinking, like Canon, who has tons of languages on their cameras. Sometimes living in Japan is extremely frustrating.

Fireflies

Last night we took a drive out to Korimachi in Fukushima to see a firefly festival. The festival itself was very tiny, but the there was hundreds of fireflies. It was very hard to take pictures or videos with my camera in total darkness, but I managed this decent one here.

I had to use a very fast film speed combined with keeping the shutter open for 15 seconds. What is cool is that a firefly flew right in front of my camera during the picture, producing that green streak.

MJ

I was pretty surprised the other day when I found out that Michael Jackson died. Love him or hate him, he still had some really good tunes. Of course this makes my mug even more timely. Anyways here’s a couple really old Japanese commercial that Michael did for the “Suzuki Love”. Looks like “Off the Wall” era Michael.

Umbrellas

Here’s the latest manners poster from the Tokyo Metro. Do people actually do this? If they do, it’s pretty terrible. And why does it say piston?

I have to say the poster is timely, what with the rainy season happening right now.