watashi to tokyo

Ghost in the shell REALIZE" project

Too bad, they don't have English page!  This is "Ghost in the shell REALIZE" project.  It is the project that Company, University and even public institutions work together to pursue the possibility of realizing a world of "Ghost in the Shell". This is the sample of LiVEARTH product.  They are making 3D globe and this one show the Global Robot Trades date.   And this one is Tachikoma realize project. A Japanese company Cerevo has officially announced they will make real Tachikoma of 1/2 scale.

Last week, REALIZE project had an award which 11 teams competed thier idea and technology. The winner was "Cyber Protection Suit" of team "SHIFT". The suit has artificial muscle and protected by air inside of the skin. This project has just started and hard to find information. I must check sometimes.

UDON!

UDON is a Japanese noodle made from wheat flour. Usually we eat it with simple soup of dashi and soy sauce. Toppings are similar to Soba’s topping, Tenpura, Aburaage, etc,. But when eat good udon, we prefer simple style without topping, even soup. Here are menus of UDON shops, a lot of variety.

Tenpura UDON: What a kind of Tempura is depends on shop. Usually Shrimp Tempura is most popular. I think.

Kitsune UDON: Kitsune means fox and we say Fox like to eat Aburaage (but of course fox doesn't like it actually.) It relates to Ianri Shrine history. The god of Inari Shrine is originally Dakini in India and servant were jackals. In Inida, they offered fried mouse to them as nutritious food, but when Japanese Buddhism adopt Dakini as Inari'god, Jackal was changed into Fox and since Buddhism doesn't allow to eat meat, Aburaages were offered instead of fried mouse to Inari Shrine and its servant FOX. This is related to why we call sushi with aburaage “Inari zushi” too.

Tanuki UDON: Tanuki means Japanese raccoon. And it means Agedama or Tenkasu when it comes to Japanese noodle. There are various views why call it Tanuki. Traditionally Fox and Tanuki, both are said they are animals cheat human, we have many old story about it. Since there is fox in menu, we should make Tanuki too. That is the one of reason why it is called Tanuki. And we say seeds of fruits “TANE” and also we call the center part of dumplings (meats part) or such type of foods “TANE”. Agedama is a kind of a by‐product when we cook Tenpra and it looks like tempura without center part = “TANE” + “NUKI”(means no or without) —> TANUKI, this is another and there are more.

Curry UDON: There is dashi in curry soup of Udon shop. So it is mixture of dashi and curry, soy sauce. You think weird? But it's very Yummy. One of my favorite food.

Tukimi UDON : Noodle with raw egg and it means moon.

Nabeyaki UDON: Usually this is the winter special in Japan, very hot and a lot of topping on it.

Kagawa prefecture is famous for UDON and inhabitants of Kagawa eat UDON a lot. They eat UDON over twice the amount of Tokyo people eat. Actually the rate of diabetic is the highest in Japan because of their UDON love. The reason why I wrote about UDON today, it was so funny to find this news last week, when we have this big news, "The first observation of gravitational waves explained", of course all Japanese news paper picked it as the biggest news at the day. But only local papers in Kagawa area picked "the average price of UDON is 3.2yen UP" . it was such a big news for them.

Good parodoy

Japanese comedian’s parody of Rihanna, Kanye West, Paul McCartney - FourFiveSeconds

The woman is Naomi Watanabe, she is well know for Form replication of Beyoncé.

 

Animal Ramens ! Zoo in the super market

Tokyo Ueno Zoo had training for animal escape accident. This year zebra escaped.By the way, they are serious.

Anyway one of the popular souvenir of Ueno Zoo is "Panda Ramen", it is non- fried instant ramen with soy sauce suop which is made by Fujiwara Seimen. Originally Fujiwara Semen made Sapporo Maruyama Zoo's "Polar Bear Ramen (salt soup) " first and it got be very popular and made good sales, so they made each local big Zoo Ramen series now. Besides these, there are Osaka Tennoji zoo Tiger Ramen (Curry soup), Fukuoka Zoo Felis silvestris Ramen (tonkotsu soup), Koyto Zoo Gorilla Ramen (Soy sauce soup) and Chiba Kamobaga sea world Orca Ramen (salt).  I have tried Polar bear only but I promise, it is very good.

When you go to the super market, you will find another series of animal ramen. it is Kirin (Giraffe) Ramen made by Ogasawara Sifun. Comparing to Zoo ramen series.  Their history is old and they released it in 1960'.  Kirin Ramen's taste was different by color.  Red is soy sauce, Blue is salt, Brown is miso soup. Penguin one is sea food soup and Capybara one is soy sauce one with yuzu flavor.  Why Capybara? I don't know. They made Flounder Ramen before and it has Curry soup.  Because Flounder is called KAREI in Japanese and Curry and Karei sounds similar to Japanese.  So They don't have deep thoughts to name it.  You will see a kind of ZOO in a super market's Ramen shelf. lol.

Ah! You may find this one too "Beware of bears" Ramen.  It was made as Hokkaido speical.

Top three manga in 2016 which are recommended by bookshop workers

Top three manga in 2016 which are recommended by bookshop workers in Japan.

No.1 Dangeon Meshi (Dangeon Gurmet)　: It's a Japanese fantasy comedy managa. Knights who have to venture in deep dangeon cook the monsters as their food. Big scorpions use like shrimp, slime is used as gelatin etc,. When you read it, you can imagine the taste and even it looks good.  Here is the English version, I found. Check it out.

No.2 Hataraku Saibo (Working Cell) : This manga personify Cell and show how they work inside body. When bacteria attacks, when allergy happens, when you injured, how our a red blood-corpuscle, white one, other our cell work to keep our body. If I could have this monaga when I was kids, I could be interested in science more. I love white coz he looks very coo. Here is the English version.

No.3 Black Clover : An adventure manga set in magic world. I didn's know this managa. Synopsis (copy) Aster and Juno were abandoned together as babies in baskets at the same church on the same day, and have been inseparable since. As children, they promised that they would compete against each other to see who would become the next Wizard King. However, as they grew up, some differences between them became plain. Juno was a quiet genius with magic, with amazing power and control, while Aster could not use magic at all. In a country where magic is everything and athletic ability is nothing, Aster tried every day to provoke even the simplest magic out of himself with physical training and loud proclamations of his will. Here are some pages.

Kitty's work

I knew the range of Kitty is wide and she doesn’t choose the job basically. But I didn’t know she is working for the construction’s site in Shinjuku and also it is well know for foreign tourist as Kawaii construction. hmm.

We will say Kitty is work even as “Gaten”.  “Gaten” is the name of job searching magazine published by Recruit Holdings Co.,Ltd. The job in that magazine was limited in Construction, drivers, cooks such manual labor, Japanese call manual labor “Gaten kei” or “Gaten”. Although the magazine was discontinued in 2009. We still use the word “Gaten”. Gaten people wear their unique clothes of Knickerbockers and Jikatabi shoes.

Sake KitKat and Edamame KitKat

I know KitKat maccha flavor is popular souvenir for foreign tourist, this year Nestle Japan released KitKat Sake flavor!  This is sold in souvenir shop in airports.  Not only maccha and sake, there are more unique Japanese flavor of KitKat. 

Here is local KitKat map. You can buy those each area's big souvenir shop. 
KitKat Purple Potato from Okinawa, KitKat Wasabi from Shizuoka, KitKat Houji tea from Kyoto.

In Past, we have strange flavore like this. Japanese like sweet beans very much. KitKat Sweet Edmame, KitKat Soybean Power,  KitKat Sweet red bean.

New standard symbols for foreign-language maps

Since Japan expects an increase in tourists ahead of the 2020 Olympics, the National Police Agency plans to replace the nation’s stop signs with versions considered more recognizable by foreign visitors.  Also the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has released a set of new standard symbols for foreign-language maps after criticism that some of its current pictograms are hard to understand or may be uncomfortable.

The most notable changes were made to religious places.  The cross sign representing a church has been replaced by a simple symbol representing a church and the swastika sign representing Buddhist temples has changes to a pagoda.  Because for most Westerners visiting Japan, the symbol looks Nazi Germany. For that changing, questions were raised a bit because the temples symbol is swastika, traditional one and not related Nazi.  But since the changing will be made for foreigners, I think easy to understand is most important.

Here is another map symbol. Can you guess what it is?　 The right side is current symbol and the left side is new for foreign map. From the top, Hotel, Temple, Hospital, Police station, Post office, bank and convenient store. http://rensai.jp/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/kigou.jpg And there is Japanese original symbols, to be honest with you, many of them are impossible to understand even for Japanese.

Floating bonsai

You can have small floating land like Castle in the sky in your room. Here is an article of wired.UK

Enoki tea diet

The latest food diet trend in Japan following the likes of Natto, Tokoroten, cabbage, and a host of others was Enoki, the boom was a few years ago though.

What you do is you buy some enoki mushrooms, divide into small bundle. Dry them in outside a few days. Then make it tea consisting of 300 of 500 milliliters of water and 5 grams of dried mushrooms. Boil the water and mushrooms and then remove from heat and let sit for 30 minutes. Then drink it. Do this for 2 weeks and your gut will shrink (supposedly).

Here is another enoki's healthy method .　As you can suppose, next day of the TV show, enoki disappeared from the store, but now the boom was gone and we can buy easily lol. What will come this year?