Chocolate beer!?

I bought this at the grocery store. Kirin Chocolate beer! I had to try it to just see what it tasted like. I’m sad to report it pretty much tasted like a normal stout beer. I couldn’t really taste any chocolate at all. I was a little disappointed.

Setsubun

Setstubun is an old Japanese tradition on the first day of spring every year. Usually a man of the house wears an oni mask (a Japanese demon), and everyone else throws peanuts at him while chanting “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” which means “Demons out! Good luck in!”. Since I was the only man at home I got to wear the oni mask.

Normally on setsubun it’s traditional to throw roasted soybeans, but in the Tohoku area we throw shelled peanuts.

Sometimes it hurt when I was getting hit with the peanuts. We had to go around to each room of the house and do the same thing. Another tradition that we did was eating a very long rolled sushi. You have to face a certain direction (this year was east by northeast), hold the sushi with two hands, and eat the whole thing without talking. Doing all of these things will give you good luck throughout the year. I did all of them so hopefully my luck will be really good!

Yummy Pizza

Since I had a very long break between teaching classes last Tuesday, I decided to go down the street and order some pizza from Pizza Hut. It’s hard to get good western style pizza in Japan. Most of it is European style with the thin crust, and usually with odd toppings like potato and such. Places like Pizza Hut and Pizza-La are like an oasis for real pizza. Anyways I ordered an interesting one. Spicy Korean Bulgogi pizza!

I also got the special cheese bun crust. It was so delicious and pretty spicy. My mouth waters just thinking about it right now!

Castles in the Sky

Here’s a shot I took on one of the roads going into Kakuda. Huge big clouds fill the sky. You can see the mountains far in the distance. Kakuda is completely surrounded by mountains. No matter which direction you look you’ll see some. I joked to my wife that maybe Laputa (the castle in the sky) was hidden in these clouds.

Some people looking at this picture will think I totally live in the middle of nowhere. Trust me the actually town is not like this. We have more than just rice fields.

Driving Around

I took a couple videos while we were driving around in the Wagon R. The first is driving through some thin streets in Ogawara. Yes all of these roads are two way streets.

In the second we’re driving in the countryside around Kakuda.

Quick on the lower right hand corner to change it HQ, so you can see it a lot better. Also enjoy the Wham and Queen playing in the background on the radio.

Winter + Snow = Terrible!

Today we got our first real snow of the winter, and it’s actually stayed on the ground for now. So far it’s given me terrible flashbacks of hard winters in Canada.

I hope it goes away by tomorrow morning. They say it might snow tomorrow too though. Here’s a wide pan shot of the garden covered in snow. Click on it to get a much bigger version.

I tried out my new camera’s photo stitch feature. I think it worked pretty good.

Super Mario-Kun

I bought this manga to help me learn Japanese. It’s Super Mario-Kun. It’s kind of  a funny and strange joke filled version of Super Mario.The reason I thought it would be good to learn with is it’s for early grade school kids. The level of Japanese is fairly basic, and it’s written mostly in hiragana and katakana (which I already know).

I’ve been very slowly trying to read it, and have been able to understand a good amount of it.

I’m ashamed to admit I’ve actually laughed at some of the jokes that are obviously aimed at Little kids. I guess I have the mind of a child!

Pringles Has A Night Club

There are two new types of Pringles lately. They’re a bit boring though, just “black pepper” and “cheddar cheese” flavor. What is interesting is they are part of the “Night Club” selection.

I didn’t know that Pringles had a night club, and that people eat chips at night clubs.

Obama Action Figure

I found this on a Japanese toy website. It’s an action figure of the new president of the United States, Barack Obama.

It actually looks like him. You can have him in all kinds of patriotic poses.

Being an action figure though, it can be put into some non-presidential poses too. Like this one.

Or kicking ass with a shotgun.

Fighting against the dark side of the force.

Or just chilling under a kotatsu table, playing some famicom.

Supposedly the figure is actually made by a company in Hong Kong. More info is here. Hilarious!

Ninja Hattori-Kun

We were watching a Japanese TV show the other day. The show features segment showing the origins of all kinds of Japanese pop culture items. This episode the had a retrospective on “Ninja Hattori-Kun.

He’s a cute ninja character for kids, star of many cartoons and manga. Very cute looking. Well it turns out that they had a live action version on TV during the sixties. In it Hattori-kun is played by a man in a mask.

The result is almost frightening! I wonder who thought this live action show would be better than a cartoon.

How many kids had nightmares after watching this?