It turns out tha the real trailblazers for the English language are not in England or North America. They are actually in Japan. Aparently Japanese people are creating new verbs all of the time. I snapped a picture of one below.
Yes, that’s right jeans are now a verb! We can learn a lot from the Japanese.
After being in Japan for a few months, I have started to crave certain foods that aren’t easily obtained over here. For instance, hotdogs, while they have their own version over here, having the normal hotdog in a bun is uncommon. Most wieners here are small bite size ones. Thankfully, Yurie found real hotdogs at one of the import stores in Sendai.
The hotdogs are from Germany and come in a jar full of water or some liquid, as opposed to the vaccum sealed refrigerated kind in Canada. This is how far you have to go some times for your craving. She also found relish and dill pickles.
Both of these are hard to find here as well. Japanese pickles are completely different from our pickles and almost never vinegary. I was so exicited to see these items. I can’t wait to barbeque.
On the weekend we went to the beach in Watari. It’s about twenty minutes from where we live. It was a pretty nice beach, but the water was still a bit cold, so there wasn’t many people there. There was however a lot of surfers there trying to catch some waves. It’s too bad the waves were not that big that day, so I didn’t see any fancy maneuvers.
On Saturday a Buddhist monk randomly came to our house and gave us a blessing. He did some Buddhist chants and rang his bell. He was dressed in the traditional traveling clothes for monks, including the straw hat. It was really cool. Yurie said it was the first time she ever had a monk show up at the house. Afterward we chatted a little with him, and he asked if I was a high school exchange student. How young do I look!? Yurie took a picture with me and the monk. You can see it below.
On my recent hunting expedition I went Seagull game shop in Nagamachi close to where I work, and to the Geo game and video rental in Kakuda. I found more interesting Famicom titles for cheap, and I thought I would share them. Thei first is “Clu Clu Land”.
This game was made by NIntendo, and is kind of like a maze game. Your character grabs and rotates on the posts all around the maze and has to reveal jewels by passing over them, all while avoiding enemies. It’s quite challenging. Next is “Argus no Senshi Hachamecha Daishingeki”.
This game was called Rygar in North America. In it it you play as a fierce warrior who uses the “Disk Armour”, kind of a boomerang type weapon. Argus look pretty cute in the artwork for a fierce warrior. Next is “Geimos”.
It your usual space shooter, but it’s in pseudo 3D kind of like Space Harrier. Next is “Rock Man 5”.
Most western people will know this series as Megaman. It’s the usual Megaman goodness. Next is “Image Fight”.
This game is quite good. It’s a space shooter, but it’s pretty advanced for a Famicom game. The power ups are really good. and the levels are really interesting, so far it’s my favourite. Next is “Super Pitfall”.
It’s actually nothing like any of the previous Pitfall games. Pitfall Harry kind of lloks like Mario too. You have to save your friends and search inside of a mountain temple for treasure, avoiding poisonous frogs and spiders. Next is “Lot Lot”.
It’s a puzzle game where you have to move the balls to different point areas. The play mechanic is very unique, and the game is quite fun. Lastly we have “Star Force”
This game was very popular in Japan, and it made Takahashi Meijin a household name over here. It’s a normal scrolling space shooter,but it was one of the first. Notice, on the artwork that in the future men will wear space hot pants to fly space ships.
Takahashi Meijin was famous for being able to press the shooting button 16 times in one second. He became the game master in Japan, and is still well known. He was also the star of the Adventure Island series. You can see the mythical powers he possess in the videos below. And no, he’s not using a rapid fire controller in the bottom video, just pure awesomeness.
We recently went to Don Quiyote. We had heard it was an interesting store from our friend Hiromi. What she had told us turned out to be true. The diversity of the stuff they carry is amazing. I would even have a hard time classifying what kind of store it is. On one end they have expensive Prada purses and on the other they have video games, wacky joke stuff, costumes for dressing up as school girls or maids. They also lots of different food items, some being forreign foods. On a different note they had a section of risque items for the bedroom. Everything you can imagine is contained in this store, and it is cheaply priced. Unfortunatly I couldn’t take any pictures inside as at the door they had a stict no pictures sign posted.
At the request of my good friend Jeff in the comments for my post “Delicious Curry“, I decided to go and finally pick up the Lee X30 spicy curry at 7/11. All that was needed was the perfect day to consume the curry, namely a cooler day and a day on which I didn’t have to go to work (in case of bad side effects). As you can see the box is emblazoned with fiery images, making me a little fearful for what lay ahead.
However there was one thing that I did not find out until I brought it home.
It contains an extra sachet of “jolokia” pepper sauce which would raise the level to X45 spicy!! On the box it says that the jolokia is actually spicier than the habenero pepper. In fact if you look at the wikipedia entry it states that Guiness world records deemed it the spiciest pepper on earth! You can see the little sachet below.
So being a true man I put the entire amount of jolokia into the curry making it X45. Let me tell you it was pretty spicy, but I was able to handle it. I think eating the X20 a few times helped level my stomach up in preparation for this task. The side effects of eating the curry were as follows: lots of sweating, burning sensation on the tongue for around an hour, and a warm sensation in my stomach for most of the day. So the final verdict is that it was incredibly spicy, but not nearly as bad as that snack that I had previously, which made tears come out of my eyes.
I found this at our house. It most likely belongs to my brother-in-law. I wanted show how fancy some of these DVD collections are in Japan. It’s a complete set of all of the Dragon Ball theatrical movies. The actual box for the set is quite nice and shiny.
It contains all eight disks of the set.
It also has a very nice information book.
It has detailed information on all of the movies, with lots of pictures.
What makes the set extra special is that it comes with two headset walkie takies, styled just like the ones in the series.
The only side affect of this deluxe set is it’s extra special deluxe price.
It’s 52,500 yen. Which is unbelivably over $500 Canadian!! Yes DVDs are ridiculously over priced in Japan. Sometimes it’s very shocking.
A Butsudan is a traditional Buddist family altar. Most houses in Japan have one of these, although they are slowly dissapearing. It’s basically a mini temple to honor the family members who have passed on. There are tablets for each family member inside and a few statues on Buddah. Every day you’re supposed to light incense and then ring the bell shown below, and then pray to the ancestors.
Also in our house we above we have many Buddist statues and paper charms.
There is a mini temple holding a special paper charm.
Most of these paper charms are for safety or good fortune. You can also see below some paper charms depicting some gods on them. Also you can see a Buddha and some Daruma statues. When you buy a Daruma you make a wish and paint one eye. Once the wish has come true you paint the other eye on.
Recently Pepsi Nex (Pepsi that has zero calories) started a special campaign to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars in Japan. With every bottle that you buy, you get a Star Wars Be@rbrick. There have been all kinds of Be@rbricks through the years, some designed by famous people too. The ones that I got with my bottles are R2D2.
Here he is out of the package.
I also got Boba Fett.
Here he is out of the package.
They have many more kinds, including Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Jawa and Yoda. You can see them all below. I want to get the C3P0, he looks awesome.
I'm originally from Canada, but now live in Japan. I like games, strange things, and trying new foods. I hope you enjoy reading my semi-interesting posts and pictures.
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In Sendai 