Poteko

Poteko is just like Ringolos in Canada, except they have some different flavours, such as mustard hotdog and salt and pepper (as pictured above). It turns out they also have them in mega size. These ones are 1.5 times bigger than normal ones.

These ones are so big they even fit around my big fingers.

By the way the salt and pepper flavor was delicious!

Metal Gear!

This week in the mail, after waiting almost two weeks, I received my copy of Metal Gear Solid 4. I ordered the Hong Kong version from Play Asia. It was a little bit cheaper than the American version, and still all in English. I’m happy to report that after playing up to the third mission, it’s incredibly fun! The graphics are simply amazing as you can see in the video below.

EDIT: I finished the game and it was truly fantastic. It was a great way to finish the Metal Gear story after almost 25 years of playing Metal Gear.

Indiana Jones

This Friday we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I really liked it. It was super fun, and just as good as the old ones. This was the first time I ever went to a movie theater in Japan. It was pretty much the same as in Canada, except for two things. You could buy reserve seats. Meaning that you can choose where you want to sit in the theater, much like at a concert. This is great because you don’t have to be at the theater so early to get good seats. The tickets can be purchased and seats chosen, and the you’re free. Just show up around ten minutes before the movie.

The other different thing was they sold a lot of merchandise at the theater. You could buy all kinds of stuff. I scanned in the brochure below of all of the Indiana Jones stuff. Click the picture to get a better view.

Delicious Curry

In Japan you can by all kinds of delicious curry that is ready to eat. You just have to put the bag into a pot of boiling water for three minutes and then put it over rice. It’s very delicious and extremely easy. I took a few pictures of some types I’ve bought recently.

I tried this kind in Canada one time before. It’s 10 times spicier than normal curry, which is actually pretty spicy. It’s very delicious though. Which is why I tried the next one.

This one is 20 times spicier than normal curry. It was really super spicy, but it was also really good tasting. What is really unbelievable is that I saw a 30 times hotter version at 7/11. I might be brave enough to try that one in the future.

This on is called Bon Curry. It’s been around in Japan for a long time and is a constant favourite. The flavour is really good, and quite different from other brands.

This one is like an Indian curry. I have yet to try this one, but judging by the picture it looks super delicious! EDIT: I tried it, and it was quite good. Lot’s of ground meat and a different taste to the normal Japanese curry.

This last one is also like an Indian curry. It’s very different from the usual Japanese curry, which is normaly like a brown sauce. This one is like a true Indian curry, similar to Madras curry. Very, very good.

Fruit Cake

I took a picture of the label of this fruit cake I got from one of my students. The English on this thing is brilliant to say the least.

Pringles Curry

I got these the other day. Thay are curry flavoured pringles. More specifically “Keema” curry. Which is kind of like a dry curry with lots of ground meat. It’s quite delicious. The chips actually tasted a lot like the real thing. Too bad it’s just for their summer selection. That means it’ll be gone soon.

Gatchaman Kewpie

In Canada Gatchaman was known as “G-force” or “Battle of the Planets”. It was super popular with boys around the same age as mine. Many fondley remember watching it everyday after school. Well the other day I found one of the coolest things yet. I found Gatchaman straps for mobile phones. They are part of the Kewpie mixed with famous animation characters. Below you can see Ken (aka Mark in Canada).

Here’s a close up out of the package.

The detail is really nice on these things. Below is the other one I got, Jun (aka Princess in Canada).

Here’s the close up out of the package.

I really love these kewpie phone straps. In fact I own three others which I’ll show off in a future post.

Classy Pretz

Pretz is kind of the popular Japanese version of pretzels. They have all kids of flavors like pizza, salad and the like. Recently they came out with a new classy kind of Pretz, “Pretz Meets Wine”. This pretz is made with Camembert cheese and is supposed to go well with drinking wine.

Kakuda Plum Festival

Today was the Plum Festival in Kakuda. Kakuda is not just famous for rockets, they are also famous for plums. Well it turns out the festival is held on our street at the park one house away. Being really close I decided to check it out. Even though it was raining, a lot of people turned out for it.

One of the events was making Plum Mochi, which is a a really sticky rice pounded by a big hammer until it’s strechy.

You can see the video of them making it below. I think it could be dangerous if the timing of the two people doing it went wrong.

I’m not a big fan of mochi but Japanese people sure are! There was a very long line of for this stuff.

One of the other events was a contest to see how far you could spit a plum pit. Lots of kids tried hard to get the furthest. None went over 3 meters.

The winner of the adults competition however spit one over 10 meters, as you can see in the video below.

Sendai Labi

Labi is one of my favorite stores in Sendai. It’s basically a huge department store for just electronics. There is about five floors of everything electrical you can imagine, include lots of video games, PC stuff and some toys too. They also have an amazing point card system where you can get around 5% to 10% of your purchase back in points which are basically the same as money.  Below you can see part of the inside of the store.