X-Japan curry bread

Apparently Don Quixote the downmarket 24 hour everything store is collaborating with X-Japan (the number of languages available in Wikipedia is amazing) the visual-kei rock band in a line of products, but I only spotted this curry bread at the cash register so I decided to pick it up to give it a try. 

Turns out, the curry bread was just a normal curry bread despite its “Spicy” name, ah well.

Lotte Fit’s dance contest

Lotte the confectionary company is holding a dance contest on YouTube as part of its Fit’s gum campaign. Here are the original Lotte commercials which hooks you in even if it’s annoying.

And here’s a real neat contest entry by high school girls (google hits here they come  :P )

Suntory The Straight

Finally, a new happoshu (the second rate beer imitation) that’s drinkable has returned to the market. After the demise of the original Santory Magnum Dry, I’ve been looking for drinkable happoshu as their price points are about 100 yen cheaper than real beer which usually start at around 220 yen. Suntory The Straight seems to be repackaged Magnum Dry, as it’s crisp and goes down easy. A poor man’s Asahi Super Dry, as you can say in both cases. It’s just that Magnum Dry had disappeared off the shelves in recent months (a year?) so I had been looking for a decent substitute and other happoshu just weren’t doing the job (let alone the sub-happoshu that’s classified as 3rd class “beer” made of soy beans, ugh, nothing half decent in this category, just move along). So, if you’re looking for Asahi Super Dry on the cheap for spring-summer drinking season, I recomment Suntory’s The Straight. Maybe an upcoming post about the hangover effects of this drink, as happoshu tend to give you worse hangovers than beer.

Engrish with a purpose

Japanese beverage manufacturer Suntory has a new pop drink out called Lucky Cider. The commercial for the drink is full on Engrish (or Japlish)… but done on purpose for effect, with the Lucky Cider girl Nozomi Sasaki singing katakana-ized lyrics with a heavy Japanese accent. This is a new self-conscious twist on inadvertent Japanese Engrish commercials and advertisements that are still pretty common.

Here are the lyrics:

-

Papa Mama Lucky morning !

My friend is unlucky !

Sun is shining for me !

Handsome guys want me !!

Big money hit me !!!

I am a lucky girl !

Because I drink Lucky Cider !!

Hi !!!

-

Awesomez.

This commercial is doubly awesome because it was all done in one take… which means it took 26 takes over 5 hours to get it right. (The 3’3″ video on the right is the making of video.)

Strawberry Cones Returns

This is part four in our Japanese pizza series (I’ve missed many opportunities in the mean time, I know) – see the left side panel.

Strawberry Cones is having some kind of an anniversary, so they’ve come up with the Pizza Anniversary topped with shrimp, squid, two types of sausage, onions, parsley, and pizza sauce (they didn’t opt for any of the funky sauces, like mayonnaise based ones). But man, seafood and sausage and parsley, mmmmkay.

This pizza is available until the end of May, so get your order in quick if you don’t want to miss out!

Getting delivery? Make sure it’s sushi!

TV commercial for Gin no Sara sushi chain.

Japanese pizza, winter 09

Strawberry Cones pizza chain has done it again! This flyer just came into my mailbox yesterday. This time, their Napoli no Kama (Napolitan Oven) store has come up with a dandy of a pizza(?). It’s a snow/spider crab pizza with grape tomatoes, spinach, black peppers, and quiche sauce(?). This picture doesn’t make things any clearer  :P

Then there’s this strawberry dessert pizza with 

Strawberry sauce and whipped cream, mmm…? (Though those strawberry/fruit sandwiches are alright, so this may be ok, but I somehow don’t think the salty pizza dough’s not gonna match the strawberries and cream, kinda like those meal crepes like ham and cheese or chili.. yeah, not a good combination there either.)

EDIT: Well well, Strawberry Cones Pizza has opened up shop in a Vancouver suburb!

七面鳥

世間は連休の間に鬼のように忙しくなるのは、やっぱフリーの宿命なのかな。でも８（？）年ぶりのThanksgiving dinner食べました。 
え、感謝祭に七面鳥にはまだ早いって？カナダはアメリカより寒いからか、感謝祭が約1ヶ月早くやってきます。（収穫祭だから当然か…） 

白身も赤身も潤ってて美味しかった。うーん、懐かしい味だ。なんせ、感謝祭、クリスマス、イースターと、ひたすら七面鳥食べまくる文化だもんなぁ。 

ボリュームは日本とカナダの中間くらいの量で丁度よかったし、クランベリーソースとデザートのパンプキンパイは甘さ控えめの日本仕様でカナダのものより美味しかったｗ　サイドのマッシュドポテトとグレービーも、んまーだったぞ

撤退してしまったのかと思ったカナダ料理（？）のお店Good Honest Grub。恵比寿と原宿のお店を統合して、去年移転してたんだね、気づかなかったｗ 

また行く事にしようっと

Eating in Asia

When you live in Asia, you naturally come across many food stuffs that are considered inedible in North America (European cuisines are more inclusive). Then there’s of course the old adage about how the Chinese will eat anything on four legs except for tables and chairs. But this story from Mongolia tops a lot of what I’ve read or heard before.

Anyways, let’s go through a check list, partially supplied by the article:

• Live octopus tentacles – No
• Baby octopii – Yes
• Duck brain – No
• Fresh sashimi of fish just knocked unconscious (ikizukuri) – Yes
• Snake blood – No
• Fried scorpions – Yes (Chinese restaurant in Tokyo, crunchy and salty)
• Horse, yak, or camel milk – No
• Horse sashimi (raw) – Yes (tasty, with ginger)
• Whale meat – Yes
• Stinky tofu – Yes (Taipei night market, foul smelling, tastes great)
• Mongolian “cheese” – No
• Vodka with beetles – No
• Bright blue and red tropical fishies – Yes (Okinawa, silver fish taste better) 
• Awamori (Okinawan distilled liquor) with habu snake – Not yet
• Dog meat – No (it’s a check list after all)
• Cow innards – Yes (quite popular here, actually, and tasty at the right restaurants, like many other ingredients)
• Chicken innards – Yes (also quite popular, on skewers)
• Chicken sashimi (raw) – Yes (no salmonella concerns in Japan, of course law doesn’t require sashimi/sushi to be frozen before serving, and chefs don’t need to wear plastic gloves either)
• Entire sheep innards for breakfast – umm, Not even close
• Sheep head – No
• Fish head – Yes (some of the tastiest part of certain fish are around the eyes)
• Fish eyes – Yes
• Entire fish, head to tail fin (at most middle finger sized) – Yes 
• Fried larvae (small) – Yes (Thai restaurant in Tokyo, crispy like kappa-ebisen)
• Boiled larvae (medium) – Yes (Korean restaurant in Tokyo, squishy, me no like)
• Arctic char (fish, semi-jerkey?) – Yes (up in Nunavut, it’s a whole different country up there)
• Caribou – Yes (very gamey, also in Nunavut)
• Poutine – Yes! (the real artery-clogging fries-cheese curds-gravy beauty in Montreal. A special entry, just because, for the Canadian content(?) There’s actually fake poutine available at the Becker’s burger-coffee joint, it kinda does the job when the craving hits)

Not a very impressive list at all because I tend to stay away from slimy things, but anyways, here’s the good part of the story:

On our very last morning on the road, the mutton problem became a crisis. At fault was our dear driver, Bimba, who decided it was time to celebrate the trip by buying a whole sheep and slaughtering it. As we went into a local ger to eat breakfast, I noticed that the sheep’s head had been removed, and the internal organs were being poured into a giant pot, the same way you might empty a can of beans.

Surely this was to feed the dogs, I thought. No one really wants to eat the lungs, stomach, and intestines of an aged sheep.

Au contraire. I’m sorry to say that we had to watch the whole mess boiling for a while on the dung fire, yielding bubbles of brownish-gray scum. Afterward, a giant steaming bowl of internal organs was placed before us with some ceremony. Out came knives and a mixture of anatomy lesson and breakfast as we sampled one organ after another. I must stress the degree to which our dear friend Bimba considered this the way to cement our friendship. There was no backing away from trying each and every organ and making a good go of the whole thing. Even fearless Miki looked a little pale.

Anyways, I enjoy Slate’s Well-Traveled series as they tend to go to far flung places where regular people can’t/won’t go for budgetary/time/safety constraints/concerns, but the travelogues aren’t amateur drivel of random traveblogs.

バンクーバー球場でのスシレース

メジャーではミルウォーキー・ブルワーズの球場でのソーセージ・レース（４種類のソーセージがイニング間にレースして観客を盛り上げる）が有名だけど、カナダのバンクーバー・カナディアンズ（オークランドのシングルAチーム）ではイニング間にスシ・レースを行っている。わさび対かっぱ巻き対ツナ・ロール、こんな感じです↓

ちなみにメジャーより３段も下のシングルAでも開幕戦では４５００人くらいの観衆が集まるから、北米のオラが町の野球文化は本当に深く根付いている事が伺える。