poetry on the drink

this is one of the common green tea products.
one thing about this is haiku works on the side of the bottle.
they are selected from more than 1.7million entries.
the contest has divisions of underage, 20s~40s, 40s and older, and of english as well.

110 is the emergency number

this indicates a shelter children who run into trouble out there can turn to.
an indivudual household plays a role of 'koban' police box.
these posts were supposed to be passed on in the community but this one has been here for more than 10 years.
no case of trouble as far as i remember.
May security last long.

right to left

in manga in japanese, lines(what characters say) are basically written vertically.
and books starts from right end(which goes copletely other way round from non-japanese books).
This bilingual version have English lines centered, and yet starts from the right end toward the left. kind of funny way.

Nodame Cantabile

Nodame Cantabile bilingual version. I would say it certainly expanded the horizon of comics. featuring classical music which is usually stiff and formal, it sprinkles gags that put you in stitches. in the very end, it turns out to be soul-stirring.

sweets not sweet

This is one of our local specialty sweets. skewered dumplings.
in japan, people speak highly of sweets, saying ‘it is good being not too sweet’.
is there somewhere else where the same thing goes? what sense does it make if sweets are not sweet enough?
it has been like this since around ‘80’s.
Some foreigners say ‘yokan’(a bar of azuki bean paste) is too sweet, and that is another story.

what i got from shoes

There have been some decoration of fake autumn leaves around a shopping mall.

sadly, I have extremely feeble skin and easily get a blister on my feet. never forget to try walking round in shoes before I buy a new pair.
and YET.
I got a blister or should I say my feet began to skin around the toe in no more than 6 minutes…
the worst part comes afterwards. I managed to throw myself in a bathtub, keeping my feet above the water. after a while I noticed I was trapped in the bathtub. i couldn’t put my feet in the water, cuz they smarted. so what could I do other than crawling out of it like a ninja?

from Miyajima

Someone said in the U.S. you have cotton swabs to clean ears,
but not ear sticks that are available here.
the ones that have a scoop on the tip.

here,
somehow any tourist spots you go to, they seem to sell ear sticks of this type as a souvenir, sometimes featuring whatever is peculiar to the place.


this is from Miyajima, near Hiroshima.

unwrapping gifts

Persimmons are in. can indulge in for a while.

Yesterday watched ‘Trad Japan’.
one of the hosts who is from Britain, said how he was surprised with the way Japanese care wrapping of gifts and skillfully unwrap them without damaging the paper,
while back in his country, they even tear it open to show excitement.
This reminded me of what happened when we visited our friend to celebrate her new baby born.
she gave each of us a gift in return on the spot, and we all opened it.
she saw me and giggled, ‘ it’s just like you, you’re opening it just in your way.’ next to me, was another friend opening it so neatly and sophisticatedly.
that was the day I noticed my way of unwrapping was like children or men.
I wasn’t born Japanese, but I’ve grown to be Japanese.

TV coverage, unidentified

a friend of mine went all the way to Tokyo to see a live performance. some idol group.
she was hanging out with some fans just the outside Tokyo Dome, where it was held, when some guys came up and asked if it was ok to interview them.
That was tv coverage from Shanghai. They all got interviewed since nobody who know them can see it anyway, nothing to be embarrassed about they thought. If it was aired in Japan, they wouldn’t have, she said.
But you do not know if it was a real thing in the first place, they did not even ask the name of the tv station. So first thing you do next time(if any), get their business card.

'Norwegian Wood'

This is 'Norwegian Wood' from 1988.
The character style back then is different from the one available now, and it does make a big difference in appearance.
It is stiff and formal in 80’s edition, while it feels fairly easy-going in recent editions.
This year again Haruki Murakami did not win the Nobel Prize, which I personally think is good for us and him.
His work has been highly valued already.
everytime someone wins a prestigious prize or something, it starts going crazy, being blown out of proportion.

high tech toilet, too caring

Quite a few houses and public buildings are equipped with high-tech toilet in Japan. Those that can spray warm water to your backside(to clean it up), blow dry with one push of a button when you finish. You see the functions on the panel.
The seats can be heated warm, and definitely have spoiled Japanese bottoms.
The thing is you cannot turn off the heat in public places, even if it is so hot that it makes you sweat.
The seats are sometimes kept warm while buildings are air conditioned in summer, the whole building is under the control.

pears

I have eaten Japanese pears for nearly a month.
I like them, but it is being out of the season.
Japanese pear is also called ‘sand pear’ in English!
I wonder if it sounds this jucy…
They just look like apples, shape-wise.
I browsed a catalog of co-op store where we usually buy grocery, to find it only has Japanese pears, not western ones.
700 grams costs 400yen, that is around $
I also checked a major online shopping site.
They have (western) pears all right.
The prices vary, 3 kilograms for example, cost 2000yen or more.

Moon viewing night

I came across a sentence saying
‘Even today, many Japanese enjoy the full moon and offer it dumplings and Japanese pampas’, when searching an online dictionary.
Maybe more so, in Korea or China. They use lunar calendar.
Here, I doubt Japanese people still decorate pampas grass on moon viewing night that is September 22(this year).
But, we still care how the moon is seen. I checked twitter and found hundreds of tweets about moon viewing.
More people than I expected seem to have dumplings.
McDonald Japan is offering three kinds of moon viewing burgers, making sunny-side up look like full moon.

taboo on flowers

One of the flowers is a cockscomb.
Is it as a common flower abroad as in Japan?

Anyway, the rest of the flowers are chrysanthemum.
This reminded me of something I heard.
Someone from Europe brought a bouquet of chrysanthemum to their friend in a hospital.
Gosh, Japanese chrysanthemum is only for the dead.
Daisies or any kind, more westernized ones would be ok.

family memorial service

Autumnal Equinox Day is three days ahead of us.
Both vernal equinox day and autumnal equinox day are designated national holidays.
During weeks including equinox days, memorial services for the spirits of ancestors are held at home.
We cleaned the family alter, offered flowers and fruits.

At supermarkets, they set up a corner where you buy flowers for alter or graves.
Priests make a round of home visits to recite a Buddhist sutra at alter. They visit many houses, so usually donot stay more than 15 minutes.

Unique sweets gift (2)

Untie the wrapping, take the lid off.



Three pieces of mochi are buried in kinako. Drop the sugarcane syrup(red capped in the photo) and there you go!

The syrup is so thick that it does not get into the mochi. tastes GOOD.
The crest of takeda shingen clan(four diamonds) is printed on the furoshiki wrapping, and kikyo flower is embossed on the syrup bottle. highly elaborate.
kikyo, balloon flower is in bloom at this time of the year.

Unique sweets gift (1)

A friend from Yamanashi brought kikyo-shingen-mochi (sticker rice cake bell flower marked).
Shingen is a name of local warlord in the 16c.
While there are many kinds of rice cakes(mochi),
this is made of sticker rice powder kneaded with sugar and
coated with kinako(soy bean powder).

It won the Silver Award at VJC-Japan's Attractive Souvenir Contest 2005.

shop site

Each box is individually packaged in furoshiki wrapping style and come with bottled sugarcane syrup .
You eat them with a small wooden spatula called ‘yoji’(attached),
a small fork will do, too.
The whole design struck me as refined.

Villan, the winner

Actress Fukatsu Eri won the best actress award at the Montreal World Film Festival 2010.

In the film 'Villan (Akunin) directed by Lee Sang-il, she played the role of a woman who goes on the run with a murder suspect.

At the awards ceremony she said ' I was gloggy-headed because of jet lag when my name was called out, I didnot know what was happening.'


She has a reputation for her talent. This news is likely to draw even more audience to the theater. Japanese tend to be influenced by authoritative approval.