watashi to tokyo

Best manga in 2008 of Amazon Japan

Lovely messy desktop!

I picked horror manga write Kazuo Umezu built a his trademark "white and red stripe house". His neighbors filed suit to stop the building cause his house spoil the view of the area. Yesterday a court dismiss a claim against Kazuo Umezu. Yes! he won. The court said we don't have any law to regulate design of house. And his house doesn't damage view of the area. I understand the judgement but I understand the feeling of neighbours too. Here is his house. You like it? But it won't be so bad and big like an ugly buidling (I think it's worst buisling in Tokyo) "Hinomaru car school"

Amazon Japan has released the Best manga in 2008.
1.Gaku 2.Yotsubato 3.Umimachi diary 4.Flower of life 5.Kimini todoke 6.Ooku 7.Kokoku no shugosha 8.Tomehane 9.Moyashimon 10.Natsume yujin cho 11.Himarwari - Kenichi legend 12.Kino Nani Tabeta?

I have not read any of them, maybe I can try some. My best is Saint Young men and new one will release next month! I can't wait.

Alpaca is boom now

Alpaca is boom because of this TV ad.

I admit Alpaca is "Iyashi-kei" (healing type), It's fun to see their pictures only.　Anyway when you collect some photo, pictures or any information and show them up on the Internet. We say "my *** folder shoot out fire. In alpaca case, he said "my alpaca folder shoot out fire."

Some funny posts from Nifty Portal Z

Today I had enough time, but I couldn't find good topics! I will pick some funny posts from my favorite site Nifty Portal Z today.
Do you know the video Where the hell is Matt? He danced everywhere in the world, it's such a simple idea but I was so impressed to watch it first. He released Where the hell is Matt in 2008 though I like this first one a lot. A guy of Nifty Portal z did the same on the Yamanote line in 29 stations. Hmm, it's not such a big project but as far as I saw the sunshine, he took almost one day to do that :-)

I like this one: "Use injector on food!" She put sauce into boiled eggs with an injector, infused soy sauce into fish in a sushi shop, and infused ketchup into fried potatoes. I think I can use this idea for some surprising food. For example, I could make a half boiled egg and extract yolk by injector, mix some yolk with some colorful sauce (like ketchup or something like that) and infuse it back into the egg by injector. And then make a hard boiled egg. I guess I can make a colorful yolk boiled egg!! I will try and report it on my site maybe this weekend.
 
This one is "let's make Myxomycete model magnet". She made real myzomycete by hand. Hmm, looks scary! But I admit the image for myxomycete is getting better because of the manga "Moyashimon".
 
The last one is this: "Bone makes food look delicious". She compared fried chicken with bone and without bone, and she found apparently chicken with bone looks great. Then she picked chicken bones and put them into various food. Except for a bowl of rice, pork, sausage, egg, even a rice ball looks more delicious with bone than without bone (she said). Bone is great! It's a silly but funny report. Anyway, we eat chicken's soft bone in Yakitori, we say "tori nankotsu". It's very nice!

What is otoriyose?

Here are nice icon sets, some of them are Japanese. I like the antique one.

Zombie Hello Kitty Birthday cake. Hmm, what a color...

Is this Hong Kong? Lion is so relaxed with Mac drink, Cute!

Wow, I didn't know that this is a unique item of Japan. "The so called "Braille Block" (Tenji Block), invented in Japan, designed to guide the blind people in the streets and public facilities."

Do you order foods from online shops often? I order sometimes, I did motsunabe last week, I order Shochu often too. In Japan, buying foods from online shops is so popular, I guess it will be related to varieties of local foods too. Ordering foods from online shops is called "Otori yose". Otoriyose net is a well known site where people can exchange information about the food they order and ate. You can see what foods Japanese order and eat at home. This is sweets page, I was attracted to this cheese cake.>Ah, it looks so soft. This is the page of Japanese sweets. This is warabi mochi and one of my favorite sweets, it looks so good to me, but maybe not to you :-)(what is warabi mochi?).  They pick the most popular foods in 2008 in this page. This one is Ichigo Daifuku (strawberry coverd by mochi). This one is nikumaki onigiri (meat wrapped rice ball), it's Miyazaki pref special. This is Tiramisu roll cake, etc. etc.

We use Yahoo! Japan or Rakuten, such big online sites to order foods too. You can check local specials easily in this Rakuten page. I wrote that Pretz has a local special before, you can buy such local souvenirs without going there.

 

Obama action figure

こんにちは　めちゃ忙しくてネタを探す暇がありませんでした。 ちょっとコネタを三つほど！　明日はちゃんと書きますよ。 Hello! I was too busy to upload a regular post today. So I pick three funny little topics. I will do my best tomorrow :-)

I really like this one. "Why Parents Should Check Their Kid's Homework". Lovely!

I enjoyed this one too : "Double picture illusion". Of course I saw a couple in the picture.

In the U.S. Japanese Obama action figure is hot topic.The funny one is Obama using  Kotatsu (table type warmer) and eating an orange. That was a sort of typical Japanes winter style. (Now people don't use kotatsu though.) The figure is about $90 on online shop. Do you want one?

Gotouch gourmet

Gotouch Gourmet

 
I ordered motsu-nabe from an online shop yesterday. Motsu-nabe is well known as a local specialty food of Fukuoka pref. There are some motsunabe restaurants in Tokyo (I recommend Arizuki in Ebisu), though I hardly find such good motsu (beef guts) in stores. When I want to eat a good one at home, I have to order it from a shop in Fukuoka. We call such local specialty foods "Gotouchi gourmet". Japan is such a small country, though foods are quite variable depending on area and prefectures. For example, Okinawa style will be a world famous one. Even for the same food, taste and cooking styles are so different in each area. Ramen is getting popular now, I read Ippudo in NY is very appreciated by New York people. Ippudo's ramen is a very creamy white soup made from pig bone. We call it Tonkostu ramen. In Hokkaido miso ramen with miso base soup is a local specialty. In Tokyo, it is Shyoyu ramen with soy sauce base. Kitakara city in Fukuoka pref is the most famouse city for ramen. There are over 120 ramen shops in the city (population is about 30000) and the ratio of ramen shops is the highest in Japan. Their ramen is soy sauce based and the noodles are thicker than usual. Okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza) is a famous food in Osaka and Hiroshima. Osaka style has usually no noodle and egg is mixed into dough. Hiroshima style has noodle, and egg is used like a cover in the bottom or top. Okonomiyaki or Tonkotsu Ramen are very popular and Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka people are proud of those as their "local soul food", but Tokyo doesn't have such food, I am a little bit envious of it. I will pick famous gotouch food here, hopefully you can try not only Sukiyaki and sushi, but also such local specialty foods.

Here are special food of 47 prefectures in Japan. These are not all, I just picked some famous ones up.
Hokkaido : Miso Ramen, Jingisukan (Genghis Khan).
Aomori : Tuna dish
Akita : Kiritanpo (rice bar pot), Inaniwa Udon, Iburigakko (smoked pickled)
Iwate : Jyajya men (noodle with meat and miso sauce), Wanko soba (wanko soba is eaten in a special way to eat soba)
Miyagi : Beef toungue, Sasa Kamaboko
Yamagata : Tama konnyaku
Fukushima : Kitakata Ramen
Tokyo : Kaminari-okoshi, Monjyayaki (a sort of soft okonomiyaki )
Kanagawa : Hato sabre
Saitama : Soka senbei
Chiba : Peanuts miso
Gunma : Yaki Manjyu (Grilled Japanese bans)
Tochigi : Utunomiya Gyoza (dumling). They have Dumpling statue :-)
Ibaraki : Natto
Fukui : Yakisaba sushi (grilled fish sushi)
Ishikawa : Kabura sushi
Toyama : Masuno sushi
Nagano : Oyaki
Nigata : Sasa dago
Yamanashi : Shingen mochi
Aichi : Uiro, Misokatsu, Tebasaki (chicken wing)
Shizuoka : eel pie, green tea
Mie : Akafuku (red beans sweet with mochi)
Gifu : Gohe mochi (sweet miso sauce with mochi)
Osaka : Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki
Hyogo : Black beans
Kyoto : Senmaizuke,(sliced radish pickles)
Nara: Narazuke, Kakinoha sushi
Wakayama : Umeboshi (sour plum)
Shiga : Goshu Dango (small rice mochi with sweet soy sauce)
Tottori : Rakkyo (Pickled Scallions)
Hiroshima : Momiji manjyu (Leaf Red Bean Cakes), Okonomiyaki
Yamaguchi : Blow fish dish
Okayama : Kibi dango (millet dumpling)
Shimane : Izumo soba
Kagawa : Sanuki Udon
Ehime : Taimeshi (Sea Bream Rice)
Kochi : Pomelo
Tokushima : Sudachi (green citrus)
Fukuoka : Karashi mentaiko, Tonkotsu ramen
Nagasaki : Casttela cake , Sara udon, Kakuni manjyu
Saga : Maruboro(round sponge cake)
Oita: Yuzu pepper paste
Miyazaki : Imo Shochu, (my best alchole)
Kumamoto : Kumamoto ramen
Kagoshima : Sakurajima Daikon (big round radish), Karukan.(soft steamed cake)
Okinawa : Goya Chanpuru, Awamori (an alcoholic beverage indigenous to and unique to Okinawa).
When you check "gotouchi" on the internet, you will find a lot of Gotouchi Kitty. It means Kitty collection in special costume according to each area history or special.

Saving item

Sony to close TV plant, shed 2,000 jobs. Japan sinks ever deeper into a depression. But it's always darkest before the dawn. I hope we can be okay soon in this year.

In these days, people are trying to live economically and I can find such items on the internet. Water saving shower head or soapless ecoball will be known well. So I tried to find some unique items in Japan.
Steamer pot : You can steam foods and egg with the steam of a rice cooker. While you cook rice, you can make shao mai too :-)
Silicon wrap : This wrap is made from Silicon so that you can use as many times as you need.
Bath hot water warmer : make it warm with micro oven first and sink it into hot water bath. It keeps hot water warm. This might be useful for Japanese style bath "ofuro". We don't change water for each person. So that washing your body first is very important etiquette.

Our brain misunderstand it

I am not big game fan but I enjoyed this movie. "Top 10 Game creators". No.1 is Shigeru Miyamoto who is the creator of Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong. It might be hard to outstrip Miyamoto for a while, because Super Mario was such special and a sort of epoch making stuff as a game and as a phenomenon. I like this somebody's wrting to New York Times writer.

I really like this!! "Hack your brain! How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio." Yes our brain misunderstand very often. I wrote this post before "Did you try too?" . In the post, I wrote how to lift a person with four people's forefingers. I found the somebody tried it in the party. Here is a video.

It's long, check after 1:00.

How to eat potato chips

I picked his videos sometimes : Tokyo Cooney. This time he is talking about the cost of living in Tokyo.

You know Orient kogyo is well known as a Japanese real adult doll maker. And this is an American boydoll maker's web site. Hmm, it's far from real and the dolls' faces have a 2D taste like Yahoo Avatars. Is it better than too much reality for American people? It's very interesting cause I have an impression American guys like mature women more than Japanese guys. Japanese guys tend to like tiny, sweet, young girls and I can understand very well why Japanese like this type anime face love doll.

This news says IT workers in Japan use chopsticks to eat potato chips (also gamers do the same at home). Do you use them when you eat potato chips? Do you think it's a good idea? I think I can try. What flavor do you like most? I like the light salt ones, the most popular taste in Japan. My friend loves to eat choco potato chips. She said they're salty and sweet. Hmm, I don't need them. By the way, I hardly eat potato chips because they're high calorie food, but if I get this tool, I can eat them more! You can cook chips in a microwave oven without oil.

I love this post "Osaka Japan". Osaka people are so friendly and when you pretend to shoot somebody in Osaka, notice how they react by pretending to be shot. Yes they are! Laughing is so important for Osaka people. We say "Nori ga ii" (how can I say in English? Osaka people are lighthearted, does that make sense?) I must admit, if you do the same in Tokyo, they will ignore you.
related post :difference of Tokyo and Osaka.

 

Words that foreigners dislike to be asked in Japan

Wow! Look at this, it was created automatically? "Old man winter pays Northwest a visit -- literally".

I like this brand "Fred & Friends". We can buy their item in Japan too. This CALF & HALF is cute, I want to make it a gift to my friend. I also want this GIN & TITONIC, STUCK UP, DRIP CLIPS and SCREWED UP. Their desk items are very cute, right?

The roll playing game for wii "Fragile" will be released soon. Here is the Japanese official site. Since the animation and music are nice, that game will be nice for Ruin fans. (I am!)

Here are more movies of Fragile. Check them out.

This is an interesting post: "words that foreign people dislike to be said from Japanese".
1."Can you eat **** ?" : they said "do you like ****? " is much better. But when I ask "natto is ok?" I don't like to be told "hell no! I can't eat smelly rotten beans" :-) ha ha ha
2."Do you have four seasons in your country?" : Hmm, I have never asked this. The funny part is that Japan is so small and we hardly imagine one county has completely different climate.
3."Can you use chopsticks?" "Can you sleep on futon?" "Can you sit with legs?" : I guess in most cases, they just care about foreign people and want to help (pass a fork or prepare a bed or choose a shop that has chairs). So this will be an issue of the way of asking.
4.When foreigners talk in Japanese, Japanese reply in English : I will admit Japanese tend to think all foreigners (except Asians) speak English and they can't understand Japanese. And I also think Japanese tend to think Asians are not good English speakers like Japanese. Singaporeans and Hong Kongers are very good speakers though.
5.Japanese ignore me and talk to my Japanese wife standing next to me. : Yes, I agree about this. Even though my foreign friend talked to shop staff in JAPANESE,｡｡the Japanese staff replied to me sometimes! It's rude and I don't like it too.