Mari - diary

How to order in Yoshinoya

Chinese Authorities Place 'Wanted' Posters For Tibetan Rioters On Web Portals. I think it is good timing that China has the Olympics this year. People pay attention to the news more.

Ah great, vegetable and bread! carving.

I ride Odakyu line every day, I ride this cute train often.

Grave of the Fireflies will be made into a real film. This is the official page. Oh well, I will never never see it, almost tears come up to see the top page of the site. I am very weak for such sad stories.

Have you ever been to Yoshinoya? I am not a big fan of the shop, but my friend loves 'Yoshi Gyu' (we say 'Yoshi Gyu' it stand for Yoshinoya Gyudon = beef bowl). He says the shop where he goes to often remembers what he likes. It means, in Yoshinoya, there are only three beef bowls on the menu. 'Nami (regular)', 'Omori (large)' and 'Tokumori (extra large)'. Actually that is just the size menu. But you can request your type beef bowl like 'Tsuyu-daku (more soup)', 'Negi-daku (more onion)', 'Negi-nuki(no onion)', 'Tsume shiro (cold rice)', 'Toro nuki( no fat part of meat)' etc. So there are only three menu items, though there are 72 ways to order in Yoshinoya. I am not sure all Yoshinoya shops accept such orders, though you may try when you go there.

lazy day

どうも～休み明けでノラクラ仕事してます。

Yesterday was General holiday (Spring day), tomorrow is weekend. I am being "very" lazy at work today. Such day, I enjoy very easygoing flash program like this and this...Or I checked the web site for aliens. (nice access map to the earth!), you know how I am lazy mood today.

I like this see this site Nikkei Style. I can see various custom house. It is not so unusual to order the house in Japan. I want to one when I got really old and decied to stay one place. I like no129, no120, no106 and no91. I need minimam simple house. I know I need sunshine and shadow, and also small space make me relax. *

This is the collection for a request "give me 切ない(Setsunai) pics". Tell me what is the closest English word for "setsunai". Setsunai means....how can I say .... sweet, sour and fragile and a little bit nostalgic? Japanese use sour like green(not mature) in Einglishi. Remember your first happy kiss, it's your "sweet sore" memory. I realized the school related pics hit me against to my expectations. especially evening school room in sepia setting sun. By the way, do you feel setsunai for them??? I wonder those how those pics look for foreign people and I want to see the same collections in other countries. How do I feel for that? *

small topics

Some animal topics. This is an old one, but we saw this posteverywhere in the Japan for the last few days: "Lab Rabbit Strongly Recommends Cover Girl Waterproof Mascara For Sensitive Eyes". This isa funny site: "obey the purebread". I want this: "Shiba inu evolution T-shirt". I must say this is creepy: "transformer pet". It lookslike a dead body.

Here are "Seven of the deadliest delicacies." They picked 7 deadlyfoods. Wow, we Japanese eat three of them! How brave we are... ButI recommend adding mochi to the list. I think at least 10 people died during the New Year.

Only people who can read Kanji on their PC will see this, a newKaomoji collection. I like both.
(-公-；）...annoyed
m9（￣Д￣）...pointing at "you."
If you like them, ha ha ha, here is a plug-in for kaomoji and this is "How to turn the words to Kaomoji".

I read the average updating period of Japanese blogs is 38.2 days.Only 25% of blogs survive for 60 days. Wow, short! I check someblogs every day as my new source; they keep their blogs for a longtime. (I never miss checking "Gorilla Boots" : I like her sense for picking photos. It's very fetish and addictive. She is good atpicking news for the site; unfortunately, it's all in Japanese.) Butmaybe most blogs will have disappeared before we find them on the net.Since I have been writing my blog for about 4 years, I must acceptrunning out of topics (yap! excuse). But I found this post, too : "top 100 blogs have an average age of 33.8 months". :-) Hmm. Perseveranceleads to success, right? I don't need to be a big blog though; I willkeep blogging as long as I enjoy it.

By the way, I found some very nice blogs about Japan and Japan Life. Check them out!
Pink Tentacle
Japan Q&A
Japan now and then

Happy Valentain Day

I got a mail asking about Valentine Day from my co-worker again, but this year I said "no thank you". I hate the stupid Japanese Valentine Day custom to give GIRI choco. But of course I love to send any gift to people who I like and love. Don't you think this looks great?!?! If I have time enough, I will go to Mont St Clair at Jiyugaoka or Quil fait bon at Aoyama to get nice cakes, it will be nice to get various type of cake bars at Stick Sweet Factory.

It was fun to cook pound cakes with my mom when I was kid. When we divided the yolk and white, we did it just by hand. But there are Egg Separators as kitchen tools like this or this is cute. I found this duck egg separator separator and also this Hillary Clinton (?) one....orz I can never eat rice with raw egg after using this.

I really agree with this "Japan debates lowering adult age to 18" . I think this country is getting infantile. It won't be a simple issue and lowering the adult age won't solve it, but we need change! By that I mean, I am watching and I am envious the U.S seems to choose "change" now.

Ha ha ha, he is funny. All my foreign friends hate him. Do you know his younger brother Yujiro Ishihara was a very popular actor, he became fat a little later but when he was young,he was very cute.

red means

suUhaa Tokyo is a gym but their unique point is they have a ZEN room. Yoga, Acupuncture -- this gym has a lot on its oriental menu now. I have never tried ZEN, it will be nice to try once.

Anyway I couldn't find good topics to talk about today, so what about a little trivia about Japanese language. Color can be an adjective; black means dirty or suspicious right? And it is the same in Japanese too. How about gray? In Japan, we use gray as meaning confusion or unknown? Is it the same in other countries too?

I think we use red most, red means all, clear, perfect. For example, we say "真っ赤なうそ red lie", "赤恥 red shame", ""赤の他人 red stranger", "赤裸々 red bareness (this means realistic). I heard red is clear and bright, that would be the derivation. We use blue for something immature, maybe it will be the same as greenness in English. "青二才, inmature boy", "青いな, if someone says this to ayoung guy, it means you are so immature". And we say "黄色い声, yellow voice". It means young girls screaming (I hate kids' and girls' yellow voice, it must include ultrasonic sound.) There are several theories about the origin of this expression. It may come from China, where they use yellow for so young. Or during the Heian era, Buddhist scriptures had sound instruction that was written by color, and yellow meant the highest sound, etc. In your language, what colors do you use?

It's snow

We had snow in Tokyo this morning, but it turned into rain now. Since this winter is warm, I think it was the last snow we could see this winter. Unfortunately I have to go out to Akihabara on buisiness tonight. I wish I could enjoy walking in snow.

I picked the interesting U.S bill's legend in this post. I read a book about bill origami having good sales, here is the site of the book.

Nobuo Takahashi is a Japanese CG artist, I found these two movies on YouTube: Musashino Plateau and Japan. Both videos seem to show the developing of Japan after WW2. But in the Japan video, it stopped suddenly, meaning the bubble, they said.

A tough pudding cup

Looks very good ;Transparent toaster" .

Looks very crazy ; cat costume. What is this "Prince Alan"?　Totally it cost around $200??? It's more expensive than my stuff!!

I ate a pudding today and I remember I read a good story about pudding before.
Morozoff is a Japanese sweet company establised in 1931. We have many Morozoff shops in Tokyo now, but originally the shop opened in Kobe first and Kobe people love Morozoff very much. Morozoff is well known for thier pudding. Since Morozoff's pudding is in a very tough glass cup, some people keep the glass after eating the pudding. Actually, they said every person in Kobe would have a lot of Morozoff's pudding glasses at home; some said their pinchpenny character (it's a typical character of west Japan) made them keep them. In days of old, such free glass cups were appreciated, but recently nobody cares about them, so that Morozoff cups were used for plants, flower vase or gargling.
In 1995, Kobe had  Great Hanshin earthquake, 6,434 were killed and over 250,000 houses were broken and people lost their place to live. But many people found the Morozoff's pudding cup in the wreckage of houses. Expensive fine dishes were all gone, but only Morozoff cups were still there. One lady who lost her mom and her house also found a few Morozoff's pudding cups at her broken house. She said the guys who were working for helping people and Morozoff's pudding cups showed her that toughness was more important to survival than looks or money.  That will be so true. So many Kobe people are reminded of the Great Hansin earthquake when they see Morozoff pudding cups still now. I read such a story.

I wrote about Kansai (west Japan) people sometimes; The difference between Tokyo and Osaka, Osaka has lower Ore Ore Fraud damage, Osaka is angry now. and maybe more in past. In those posts, I said often Osaka people are pinchpennies :-). But basically I like Kansai poepole very much. They are tough and never forget laughing.

It's the Adult day.

Today is a general holiday, my post is short today.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Sorry, I laugh too much? "Mommy Prays A Lot"

Two good stories from the UK. "A Dog and His Best Friend - Love Doesn’t Die" and "The octopus who loves his Mr Potato Head"

This is a new type of gift. When Japanese people have a baby, friends and family send some gifts or money to the parents and the parents have to reply to them. This is an idea for the reply: "Dakigokochi". It's a package of rice weighing about the same as the baby and baby's face is put on the package. You can sense the weight of the baby and eat the rice after that. I think this is a good idea!

This is the site of UNIQLO Paper. Maybe they are an ad for UNIQLO. Looks very cool.

I have to work tomorrow!!!

Ahhhh, I have to start to work tomorrow!! My holiday's over!

Very nice,Pic post: Sleevefaces

This year, I will care more about eco and try to live an eco life. I was hooked on this news today: Scientists to Make Cows Fart Like Kangaroos to Cool the Planet.

To prevent aging, I read "water" -- I mean keeping body moisture is very important. People love to drink green tea or coffee at work, but do you know those drinks deplete the body of fluids as pee. The best way to take water is just regular hot water. I was waiting for that and finally, it has been released.

This is "a pointing hand" game. If the hand points at you, you must follow the orders of the cards. Here is a movie of that hand moving. Ha ha ha, funny.

hello kitty contacts

The year of mouse, I will start that cat topic. Wow wired hello kitty contacts. It will be nice for Halloween party 2008. I picked this from the site "Hello Kitty Hell". Thank you.

I found this one on Youtube, Japanese made a guy's life. Well sad but it will be real.

I laughed so much for this silly TV show. " can't lauch hospital"

Sorry for short post, I am still in holiday and being lazy.