watashi to tokyo

JAL 1628 met UFO in Alaska

Check out this video and this blog: "The Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 UFO Encounter". The encounter happened in 1986 and we have a Wiki page about it in Japanese, but not in any other language, so I hope you add it to the English Wiki.

 

New Yakiniku Sauce

This is a music video by the Japanese artist "Twill". This song was Number 1 in Sweden and other European countries, but she is almost unknown in Japan. Have you heard of "Twill"?

It's interesting to read this article: "Depression Risk Higher With Trans Fats, Lower With Olive Oil Consumption". Japanese people consume fewer trans fats than the Spanish, but I don't think we have less depression.

We had a rayu boom last year, and afterwards spicy seasonings and sauces became popular in the food industry. In Japan, Yakiniku (thinly sliced grilled meat) is a common way to eat beef (as opposed to thick steaks). When we eat meat, we use Yakiniku sauce. Ebara is a Yakiniku sauce company, they released a new sauce called "Gudakusan". In addition to rayu, the sauce also has other ingredients like sesame, roasted onions, garlic, etc. and they are crunchy. The funny thing is Yahoo! Japan has this news on the top of its homepage, as if we're so interested in this sauce. By the way, Yakiniku is quite an expensive food in Japan, so someone created this funny video: "Air Yakiniku".

I didn't know about this, Masakichi Hamamura was a Japanese artist who lived in the US. Here is a post about him. "He wanted to leave a parting gift to the woman he loved. He made a statue of himself so life-like and realistic, people couldn't tell which was the fake even while the real Masakichi stood next to it."

 

 

Konbini Ikou!

Very cute video!!

Bottle by Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Solid State Society's 3D trailer.

This is a funny blog: "Hanji Smatter". The blog explains the meaning of Westerners' tattoos of Chinese characters. I really recommend conferring with a native Chinese or Japanese person before you get a kanji tattoo. So many tattoos are meaningless!!

This is a song created by foreign students in Japan who love Japanese convenience stores. Ha ha ha!

My account was hacked!

I am so sorry, my Hotmail address was hacked and some people received strange spam from me. Please don't open it, just delete it and block the account if you get it. I won't use that account anymore.

I laughed a lot at this: "The average Asian aging process". The comments are so funny: "apparently menopause turns Asian women into Kim Jong" . Ha ha ha.

This is an interesting post (it's a little bit old though): "10 things I hate about Japan". I understand and agree with some of them. But Japan is changing a little bit, I think that people are more accepting of foreigners than before, no?

Another post about Japan I found: "Useless things in Japan". I agree, elevator guides in department stores, excessive packaging, too many public announcements, hanko, etc.

 

It's 25 o'clock. Strange?

Three cats ignore what he's doing... funny.

For me, the time I wake up until the time I go to bed counts as "A DAY." I didn't know that this is strange.

I really love this video: "Bear Gets High On Mushrooms". Those mushrooms might be Amanita muscaria, which are really delicious. Actually, the UMAMI rating is 16 times that of MSG. Some people eat pickled amanita in the Nagano area in Japan. But usually we recognize that they have toxic consequences.

 

Sushi police

I don't know which country made this video, but it's really funny. The Japanese government issued a declarative statement about creating a "Japanese food recognition system" in 2007, but they didn't follow through with this plan. This year, the government created a sushi police, mainly to promote better food safety and hygiene standards, not to regulate taste or presentation. But some people don't like this system. I understand this reaction, we Japanese have taken liberties with making really strange pizzas and burgers. Recently, a terrible "Udon burger" was announced, the filling is fried udon with soy sauce and green onion.

I laughed when I read this article: Japanese are silent bombs. It means that Japanese people aren't directly confrontational, but will wait to air their complaints on the web. For example, they won't complain if they receive poor service at a hotel, but they will write a bad review on the web later.

Groupon's CEO apologized about the Osechi debacle on Youtube!

 

 

Emergency house EDV-01

Sorry I'm not updating this blog often :-p

Wow, look at this: "Control the Humanoid Robot by Kinect." You can enjoy human controlled robot fighting soon.

YouTube released the 2010 video awards Japan, but I am not impressed at all.

Animation winner: "Kone Kone Sushi."

Daiwa Lease is a Japanese construction company and they made a prototype for an emergency house: EDV-01. The house can be built in five minutes, it generates electricity using photovoltaic power, harvests water from the atmosphere, and uses a waterless toilet system. Here is the video. The funny thing is that they introduce the product with strange animations narrated in English to try to make it look cool.

 

More heros are donating now!

News of manga hero Tiger Mask's donation has spread throughout Japan and now we have other heroes following suit. Someone gave $10,000 in the name of "Tetsujin 28-go," someone else gave a gift as "Rei Ayanami," and yet another donated money with the message "It's my turn, from Joe Yabuki." It's a facetious story, but a good meme.

The Japanese medical company Takeda has agreed to a licensing deal with Zinfandel Pharmaceuticals concerning a promising new biomarker for assessing the risk of Alzheimer's disease. We know the risks of alzheimer's, but we need a curative drug too.

Ha ha ha, really? 1/4 of Japanese guys in their 30's might be virgins! (web translation). Even for guys in their 40's, one in ten might be a virgin. Hmm... really? Anyways, I found a foreign guy talking about how you can GET with Japanese girls in Japanese, it's very funny but I can tell this is not real.

Tiger Mask appears

I am still in a holiday mood and can't work or update this blog very much. We call such a mood "Mattari" in Japanese, which means lazy, slow and relaxed. I found a nice cafe where I can enjoy such a Mattari mood in Shimokitazawa. The cafe is named "Stay Happy," a backpacking couple opened it and decorated the place with things they collected from around the world, so the interior seems culturally mixed. I will go there soon.

 
Japanese Osechi news was picked up in the foreign media. I am still following this news coz I am always disappointed to see the difference between menu photos and the real items. I hope that this issue will make restaurants nervous. Anyways, this is the New Year's meal at a Japanese prison, it looks much better than that Osechi.

Tiger Mask is an old manga from the 70's, a kind of SPOKON manga. Tiger plays fair and defeats evil wrestlers who fight dirty. Tiger Mask comes from a children's orphanage and he donates a lot of his winnings anonymously. At the end of the story, he dies in an accident, but even as he is dying, he throws his mask away to hide the fact that he is Tiger Mask. Kids from the 70's love the manga and actually my co-worker picked this manga as his favorite. This year, we have news of some real Tiger Masks appearing and donating packages. Some of the anonymous donors left money and other items for kids. What a good story.

13 people died from eating mochi this year

Dicing with a rice death in festive Japan. I read that a total of 13 people died from eating mochi during this New Year holiday. Most of them were elderly people who couldn't dislodge the mochi themselves. If someone chokes on mochi: 1. Remove mochi using fingers if it is visible. 2. Beat the person's back (or upper stomach) to try and dislodge the mochi 3. Use a vacuum to suck out the mochi until medical assistance arrives.

As a Japanese person, I don't like the picture that the news site used. First of all, why are chopsticks set on the top? We would never do that. And the items pictured are not mochi, but rather some kind of daifuku or dessert made from mochi powder. Mochi is made using only mochi rice so that it is sticky and has an elastic mouthfeel. Daifuku is made from mochi powder and sugar, so it is much softer and easily dissolves in the mouth. We should not be careless with daifuku, but they are not a silent killer like mochi.