Keys

While I was at the mall “Diamond City” the other day I noticed something funny at this key shop.

You can buy a key “Spair”!

Mannequins

At the mall I saw some really strange looking mannequins. As you know Japanese people like big eyes in their animation, well I guess this has spread to mannequins too.

Uniqlo

By far the best, cheapest and coolest clothing store in Japan is Uniqlo. It’s kind of like the Gap or Old Navy but even cooler. I often like to go to buy T-shirts, as they have many really cool ones.  The prices are really good too, and you can usually find sizes that fit western sized bodys.  You can click the link and see their website and all of the cool stuff at Uniqlo . At the bottom you can click on the US or UK stores to see the English version.

Blue Pepsi!?

Yes, just this week a new kind of Pepsi came out in Japan. It’s called Pepsi Blue Hawaii. It’s a mix of Pepsi, Pineapple and Lemon. It’s also very blue.

It kind of tasted like when you mix pineapple rum with coke, except with no alcohol. It wasn’t bad at all. Like all things over here it’ll probably be gone in a couple of months.

Red Hot!

KFC is having a special promotion this summer called “Red Hot Summer”. It’s a selection of spicy flavored chicken.

They have all kinds of different things including a delicious looking chicken sandwich (which I hope to try real soon). Even the Colonel is in the mood, changing his suit from white to fiery red.

I should mention on a side note that at all of the KFCs over here they have statues of the Colonel outside to the front entrance of the restaurant similar to the one in the picture, just not in red.

Earthquake

So there was a level seven earthquake about 100kms from where we live. In Kakuda it was a level five. It still was pretty crazy how much everything shook. We didn’t have any problems though, just a bicycle and one plant falling over. On the news though there was landslides in a few places and people got stuck in trains for a few hours. The trains still weren’t running that night. I was really glad I didn’t have to go to work yesterday. I would have probably got stuck on the train. So far I’ve felt 11 earthquakes since I came to Japan in April. Two of them have been big ones and the rest have been small.

“American” Cars

As you may or may not know, Japanese people aren’t really fond of buying any kind of car that isn’t Japanese. Sure you see the odd German car or very rarely maybe an Italian car, but for the most part it’s all Japanese. Well when we went to the Suzuki dealership I saw something interesting. My Father who loves American cars, especially Chevrolet will find this interesting.

This is the only Chevrolet that you can buy in Japan. What funny is it’s not even a model that is available in North America, and if you look at the bottom, It’s actually made by Suzuki. I can honestly say I’ve never seen one on the road. You can see in the commercial below clearly Chevrolet is thought of as a subdivision of Suzuki in Japan.

Kakuda Kid’s Park

Last Monday our friend Hiromi and her son Komei came to vist us in Kakuda. We had a nice lunch and then we went to the kid’s park to have some fun. It had the usual assortment of swings and playground stuff, but by far the best part was you could rent little pedal cars, and the kids could pretend to drive around. They had little streets and signs just like the real roads in Japan. Even speed limits painted on the road (it was 20km/hour, you would have to pedal pretty quick). Komei had a lot of fun driving around as you can see below.

Spicy!!!

The other day I decided to try a new snack. It’s called “Geki Kara Mania”. On the bag it said it was for so spicy it was for “maniacs”. Now, in Japan usually when they say something is spicy, it usually isn’t that bad. Well, It happens that this one was. In fact it was the spiciest thing I have ever eaten in my life. Now people who know me, know I like really spicy stuff so that’s saying a lot. I did manage to finish eating the bag, but at the end I was sweating like crazy and my eyes were watering. I actually felt a little light headed for a short time afterwards. Needless to say my mouth burned for a few hours.

Diverde

The other day we were in Sendai Station in the basement where all of the restaurants are, and I spotted this Italian restaurant, Diverde.

Everything looked delicious on the menu, but one strange thing popped out at me.

What the hell is “Aptipasto”? Did they combine appetizer with antipasto, to make a new word? Also you can notice they misspelled Japanese as well. They put “Jpanese”! (Thanks go to Jeff for noticing.)