watashi to tokyo

The Tatami Galaxy

This is "Yahoo’s Year In Review 2010 Of Top Searches: My, How Much You’ve Grown." It's for Yahoo US, not Yahoo Japan.

Top Overall Searches On Yahoo! in 2010:
1. BP Oil Spill
2. World Cup
3. Miley Cyrus
4. Kim Kardashian
5. Lady Gaga
6. iPhone
7. Megan Fox
8. Justin Bieber
9. American Idol
10. Britney Spears

I don't know #3 and #4, my impression is that American music entertainment is getting worse. But Japan's is maybe worse than the US's. Right now, Japan's top idol group is AKB48, a group of amateur girls who perform in their Akihabara studio. I'm not familiar with them at all, but I know that their calendar sold well on Yahoo's shopping and auction sites. Anyways, at Yahoo! Japan, we call Yahoo US "Yahoo Inc." We are a related company, but Yahoo! Japan's parent company is the Japanese cell phone carrier "SOFTBANK." SOFTBANK is the official dealer of the Apple iPad and iPhone and Yahoo! Japan's search engine is provided by Google. It's complicated here. :-)

I laughed when I found out that Yojohan Shinwa Taike's english name is "The Tatami Galaxy." It was originally a novel by Tomihiko Morimi that was made into a TV animation this year. The story follows a third year college student and other people in Kyoto. Here is a video.

Today, this animation won an award at the Japan Media Arts Festival. By the way, "Yojohan" means a four and a half tatami-size room, which is very small, so it's synonymous with being poor.

It's bonenkai season

Ha ha ha, funny: "dirty pillowz" from the blog Who Killed Bambi?

It's Bonenkai season. I don't know how many I will attend this year, but I already have one next Wednesday. We will have it at a motsu nabe izakaya with a nomihodai plan. It costs 4500 yen. Here is the shop's website.

 

I think I lost a little bit of weight coz I've been eating Cup Noodle light for lunch for two weeks. Since we have three flavors: "regular," "seafood," and "curry," I am not getting tired of eating them everyday. It's an easy and reasonable diet challenge. Here is the old TV ad.

 

Kurutoga means "rotate sharp"

Check out this interesting post from Wired: "The Right Gift for the Geek Who Has It All." I would love to get that shower head. They picked the Japanese mechanical pencil "KURU TOGA," which they translated as "arrive sharp," but that's wrong. In this case, "kuru" refers to kuru-kuru, which means "rotating." When you use the pencil, the mechanical pencil lead rotates, which makes the tip stay sharp automatically.

This is a good pen. Fedex has very interesting contents: "Changing World"

 

 

Family Mart's new rice balls were created by Twitter followers

Japanese convenience store chain Family Mart is making and selling rice balls inspired by ideas collected from their Twitter followers. I am very impressed by these flavor combinations. Japanese rice balls have changed a lot and they've established a strong presence in the world of Japanese fast food.

One rice ball flavor is mentaiko + cheese + rice with shiso leaf. I bet this must taste good.

 

The next flavor is sukiyaki with tamago kake gohan. I love 7Eleven Japan's tamago kake gohan rice ball very much, so I think this one would taste great too.

 

The last flavor is bacon, cheese and katsuobushi. It's a completely unexpected combination, but I'm sure this must be yummy. Cheese and bacon match well with anything and katsuobushi also complements them well.

 

It's December

It's December!!

This is very weird. Thinking putty vs Magnet. Wow, it eats the magnet...

Recent hot news in Japan: Kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa is famous for being a bad drinker. A few days ago, he got beaten up in Roppongi and injured his nose, cheekbones, etc. At first, the news reported that he was a victim, but a witness said that he made some guys drink tequila from an ashtray and that's what caused the fight. I read that he is very arrogant, and that he often says "I am a human national treasure" when he's drunk, how stupid. Divine justice was served.

Since "Winter Sonata" debuted, Korean entertainers have firmly established their place in Japan. TVXQ is very popular even now, though they stopped releasing new albums. I didn't know this, but girl group KARA is getting popular, and today I found a funny post about Girls' Generation. A Girls' Generation revelation has come out. Ha ha ha, yes, it's hard to tell who's who.

Ahhh, this is a good idea: clip earrings and necklace. I want to MAKE it! It wouldn't be difficult to make it myself.