Horse Arse

There is no explanation for this. "Come to our bar if you like the rear ends of horses."

送別会

We went out to dinner with Toshikatsu, Kiriko and her husband for a bit of a Japanese farewell. The restaurant was an Australian themed one. We ate kangaroo, crocodile and steak.



Bye, bye.

Bek's Birthday

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Roppongi to have Bek's birthday. Here she is opening some lovely presents. As you can see, Alice is missing everything by being asleep.



The candles were really hard to light. They were shaped into the letters in 'Happy Birthday'.



Alice and Ema are trying to escape the adults. Okay, so it's just Alice.



Here's everyone at the table except me, and Alice is sleeping next to Bek.



The cake. It was a chocolate mousse cake.

Winding Down

Well, unless you haven't noticed I haven't really written anything here in a long time. Japan is kind of normal now, for me. In fact I've lived longer in this apartment than in my house in Botany. I've kind of forgotten anything but my daily Japanese routine. All my neighbour hood knowledge is about where to get cheap apples, which are the closest supermarkets, and the things I need to buy from the three of them because I can't find everything in one store. Indeed they are not very super.

We're heading back on December the 13th. The tickets are booked but it's getting iffy with the company, pay-wise and expense-wise, lately. They haven't managed to pay for our apartment for this month, for example. Luckily we won't be kicked out on the street because we have a cute, helpless daughter.

This blog was for any interested parties to peruse, but mainly so I can remember my trip in the future. I'll probably only post Japanese videos from now on, or a few pics here and there.

A Woman's Mind

Oh those fickle women.



This coffee is innocently brewed and really blended.

Ball-Shaped Onions

Here's an ad which caught my eye. It says "with the power of onions, a healthful life." I've never thought of onions as a wonder food, and have thought even less of them as a delicious drink. I suppose the ad execs were thinking onions are cheap, they aren't bad for you, and voila, new health food.

They have a lot of faux health products in Japan, as do Western countries, however a lot of them centre around the amazing properties of regular food. For example, pills which contain the equivalent of 25 sweet potatoes. Just try and eat 25 sweet potatoes a day. You can't, can you? Well just throw back one of these pills. And then there are the testimonials, some old man saying he tried to eat 25 sweet potatoes a day but couldn't carry them all home from the store on his bike. So he takes these pills, and he's not dead yet. Proof of their efficacy.

Oh and they still have those vibrating belt machines which supposedly wobble off fat. They had those machines in gyms in Korea, and people used them.

Hurrgh!

Nothing like a body shot in the morning to wake you up. I'm going to market a coffee called 'ice water down your back'.



The picture sucks, but so do the names of these buildings.



This obviously describes the employees, who scurry about looking for the right shoe size and scratch their backsides with relish.



i.e. make your dick stand up medicine.

Birthday Presents

Jannma sent Alice an extra room for our small apartment. She spends a great deal of time inside lately. I'm going to try to hang it off the side balcony like a window box.



Bek and I bought her a keyboard and a guitar to play around on. She looks so Indie in her Nepalese beanie.





We also had cake, so she tried hard to get it out and eat it all the way from the bakery to the restaurant.

Hokkaido Food

Japan is known for it's healthy food, but this reputation seems to be based only on sushi, because so much of Japanese food seems wholly unhealthy to me. I suppose my only idea of the food comes from dining out, and dining out all the time in any country is not going to be too good for you. However, Japanese cuisine is heavily into the fried, adding mayonnaise to everything, eating fatty meat and frying.

In Hokkaido we stayed in two ryokan, a type of Japanese traditional inn with a set breakfast and dinner. These meals consist of multiple small dishes and centred heavily on seafood. You can see above the meal which is served in the room.



This is a one person serving. You can see some tempura, sushi, rice, egg custard, vegetables, soup, prawns and other stuff. My mother doesn't actually like seafood that much, so at our second ryokan, on the second night, they seemed to adjust the menu to a more Western taste. We got some bread, as well as two types of crab, lobster, steak and sushi. This was altogether too much to eat. However we all did our best and they can be commended for effort.



Also we encountered a lot of soft serve ice cream with weird flavours, as Hokkaido is famous for dairy products. We found beer and potato flavoured ice creams, in synergistic combinations of famous fare.

Alice's Second Birthday

Alice had her second birthday in Hokkaido, so we had a low-key celebration. We bought a cake and had some yakitori, which is chicken kebabs. She's not smiling because she's blowing out the candles.

Hokkaido English

We went to Hokkaido for Golden Week. Here's a lazy post, with some Hokkaido.



Blaze dust probably means burnable rubbish.



Hokkaido is famous for potatoes. Also for milk, beer and sea urchin.



This sounds even less exciting than a flea circus.

Chopstick Master

Alice doesn't usually like ice cream.

Sweden, Netherlands

I was walking home today after buying a home made bentou, not a grotty konbini type. A Japanese man stopped me, and he started to babble in Japanese and English. He asked me if I was European, I told him Australian, and he said he lived in Sweden, no the Netherlands.

Of course, forgetting where you live is really easy, I mean, there are so many countries one may come from. Anyway, his family had just come over from Norway and were kind of homeless, and he was just off to the konbini. I offered him my bentou, but not the milk for Alice or my deodorant.

I mean, he smelled okay.

He looked quite hesitantly into the bag, and at Alice, and into the bag once again. Then he said he was really about to go to the konbini to get a chicken rice for his mother. I just kept thrusting the bag at him feigning ignorance of his gift-horse-looking-in-the-mouthness, douzo, take it, he keeps looking down to hungry Alice, douzo, douzo, finally he takes the pork and eggplant bentou. I personally think it's healthier than chicken rice, so he got a good deal. Anyway, he thanked me, bowed as he edged further into the road and the oncoming traffic. His Finnish mother thanked me by proxy, and he walked away to scoff my favourite bentou.

I ate half a peanut butter sandwich.

Beer

I was saying before that alcohol is really cheap, so going to the sake store is almost as big a disaster as going to the konbini. I always buy a load of weird stuff, most of which I don't really want to consume, but force myself to anyway in the name of experience.




On the left we have some Satan Red beer. It tastes exactly like normal beer, and it's not red. On the right we have The Forbidden Fruit, which unfortunately also tastes like regular beer in every way. It's like when you buy a sci-fi novel based on the cool cover art, it really isn't indicative of the contents in any way.



I thought something amazing was going to be in this bottle too, it's beer made by Trappist Monks. Unsurprisingly, religious people are not really experts on alcohol production and this also tasted like beer.





This beer which I am drinking as I type this is cherry flavoured beer, and comes through in two ways, it's cherry flavoured and it's also reddish. Score one for truth in advertising.



This one was also good, it's wine, juice and vitamins mixed together in a healthful tonic. It's from Italy, and it tasted the most delicious of them all.

Sandwich

I had heard about this delicacy but only today got to try one. It tasted like strawberries and cream. I was going to dump all over this in usual fashion, but I used to make potato chip sandwiches, and cheese and Vegemite is also somewhat unusual.

Shinagawa Station

I actually think Foodium is a good effort. At least you can guess its meaning.

Yokohama Signs

Reminds me of my students wanting to 'level-up'.



It was indeed. Very yaki. Japanese doughnuts aren't fried, they are just cakes, but round. Also they are really dry. Sorry Japan.



This sign was in Yokohama's waterfront park. I suppose they mean stuff like lemonade stands and dog walking businesses.



I didn't take this recommendation.

Combo

A hamburger made with pancakes, rather than a bun. More nausea can be induced by noticing the shrimp and mayonnaise pizza at the top left. From the America House restaurant in Yokohama.

Random English

I assume this is marketed as a health drink. They shouldn't have added the Coca Cola logo, in my opinion.

The second name. It struck me. I won't say why.

This is an amusement park, although of what kind I'm unsure.

Perfect naming, and check out the motorised chair/bed.

Jindaiji

Last weekend we visited with Yamamoto-san and his family, who took us to Jindaiji temple . Jindaiji is the second oldest temple in Tokyo and is dedicated to the water god, Jinja Daio. The grounds are filled with beautiful gardens and trees, as well as traditional pebbled spaces.

This temple is a Buddhist temple, which you can tell because there are no large red wooden gates, or torii. Buddhist and Shinto temples are, of course, different, however they are not so different as to be obvious to outsiders, and the religions are not really mutually exclusive anyway.

However, the same sorts of things are done at all temples, the standard procedure being to approach the front, make a donation, bow two times, clap two times to get Buddha's attention and then you can bow again or pray.

Before you approach the main hall, it's quite common to perform some ablutions to purify yourself. This ritual also has a special method, you pick up the ladle with your right hand, then pour water onto your left hand, pass the ladle to your left hand, wash your right, pass it to your right hand again, cup your left hand to hold some water and take a sip to rinse your mouth, and finally rinse the left hand again.

Another hall on the grounds. There are always multiple halls and shrines at temples.

Here are some prayer papers which are neatly folded and tied.

We had a nice lunch with the family at a bakery restaurant. With your set meal you could have unlimited small fancy rolls which had been freshly baked. Alice and Noa got friendly and showed each other their toys before snatching them back quickly. We also went to a discount baby store to buy some more warm baby clothes, including beanies, gloves, scarves and boots. Alice was so tired by then, having not slept the entire day that she promptly fell asleep in the trolley.

Then we were invited to Yamamoto-san's mother-in-law's house for a delicious impromptu dinner. The kids slept while we drank beer and talked.