Aino Minako-chan

I was going to make a post about video games and translation and the state of the Gakuen, but instead, I will share the following.

I received a free sample Lemon Vinegar Kit Kat while shopping yesterday, and after one bite at lunch today, I have this to say about the lemony, vinegary taste:

Oh my fucking god. What the fuck is this flavor? It's like lemons died in my chocolate. Oh sweet... I actually had to eat some crackers to get the taste out of my mouth.

More later when I can stop remembering the horror.

It's a few days late, but have a follow up to my Apple Juice Experiment, Part 1.

LAST TIME ON APPLE JUICE EXPERIMENT:

Minako-chan hand-squeezed an apple. It was fun, but it wasn't perfect. Would using a cored apple produce better results?

( EXPERIMENT TIME!! )

Okay, so a few days ago applcheeks posted the following hysterical video showing Murakami-san from the comedy trio Morisanchu showing off how she can get a young boy ready for school in less than 5 minutes.



Go ahead and watch it; it's hysterical. I'll wait.

........

ANYWAY, although there are many many hysterical highlights of the video, one of the best was when she hand-squeezed about half a glass of apple juice for the kid's breakfast. And I do mean HAND squeezed--no tools involved. For those who didn't catch the Japanese, she explained that she simply froze an apple, and then defrosted it. And I thought to myself, you know what? That... actually makes perfect sense. The freezing would theoretically cause the water in the cells to expand, bursting the cells, and leaving you with a readily-squeezable apple. AND, as I just so happened to have an apple handy, I decided to try it for myself!!

( EXPERIMENT TIME! )

ETA: I updated with Part 2 of the experiment here

Things I Discovered On My Summer Vacation

1. One can indeed get sick of ham, cheese, and bread.
After three days in Paris and one too many delicious delicious sandwich, I suddenly discovered that I was utterly sick of the combination. Honestly, if I had one more slice of ham, I thought I was going to scream. For dinner that last night, my mom and I went out of our way to order a plain omlette and spaghetti respectively.

2. I missed Scottish food.
This was surprising to me, since I dislike many "traditional" Scottish foods, like blood pudding or haggis or fry-ups, but I love meat pies and pasties and beans and empire biscuits and leek soups, so I was in heaven. Plus, my uncle (a former butcher) makes a to-die-for lamb stew. Seriously, it was a good few days in Glasgow.

3. My cousin got divorced.
I totally didn't know until my aunt started talking about his new girlfriend, which made me think that she was talking about someone else with the same name for three-fourths of the conversation. It was seriously confusing. No one tells me anything! (Note to kinomakoto : Not R, the one you know; I mean R's oldest brother. R has two little girls btw who are ADORABLE. The older one, age 2, is a doll who speaks with R's strong Glaswegian accent; it's hysterical.)

4. My grandpa has some great war stories.
Like, he told us this one about his earliest memory, which involved him in hospital when he was 3 with scarlet fever, during WWI, watching from the balcony of the hospital as lights lit up the sky to search for bomb-carrying airships (zeppelins, because they didn't use bomber planes in WWI). Or how he mainly worked on convoy rescue ships, which, despite the tendancy to run into German submarines, was the best job (he said) because the ships had lots of extra room and extra supplies since they needed to be ready to take aboard survivors. Or his story about manning a ship to carry a bunch of Americans and their sekrit sekrit package to Italy while being hunted down by more German subs.

That was a really interesting story: He said that he never did find out what they were carrying, but that the Americans they were with weren't military, as the only real military aboard were he and his fellow British gunners; he assumed that the Americans were CIA or something. (I would think that the captain and main crew would have been British military as well, but they apparently weren't; Grandpa was the highest-ranking military member when they arrived in Italy for the debriefing. Maybe they loaned gunners to the merchant marines?) Grandpa said that they were followed by an American naval ship, and he was always amused because he said that the American sailors never seemed to go below deck; there were always people lounging around or even sleeping above deck. But whatever they were carrying, the Germans apparently got wind of it and started submarine attacks. Grandpa said that one night, there was a gigantic explosion, but he didn't know what had happened until the next morning when he realized that the American ship was simply gone.

When they arrived in Italy and unloaded the sekrit sekrit cargo, he said that he and his fellow gunners went to a debriefing with the American military in which he was the highest-ranking military officer and therefore had to deal with them the most. One American military guy got on their cases for looking so untidy and unprofessional, saying that they all looked like they hadn't slept for days, to which my Grandpa replied, "Well, that's because we haven't. Because of the submarines." At which point an apparently higher-ranking American military officer chewed out the first guy for giving my Grandpa and his men crap, and he ordered them to have a shower and some sleep before they came back. Grandpa said that the first American military guy never apologized, but later on, the guy did take a car and drive Grandpa and his fellow gunners to visit Pompei for a few hours, so he supposed that was the guy's way of saying "Sorry I was an ass."

5. You can remove the seatbelts from airplane seats.
Okay, so I had an adventure getting back to Japan... First, my luggage was temporarily misplaced. I had two connections on the way back to Tokyo. My first flight was running late, but I managed to make the connection. Unfortunately, my bag did not. Luckily, I had a long layover, it was a short flight, and there was one more flight that night, so my bags made it in time for the last leg. Then, on the plane to Tokyo, I went to buckle up... only both sides of the buckle were firmly attached on one side. The other side, normally the side with the adjustable strap, was reduced to just a strap. I blinked at it for a while, tried to figure out if I could thread the buckle back onto the strap, and just called a flight attendant. She and another flight attendant discussed it for a bit, and since I really didn't want to move from my nice aisle seat into the only other available seat (a middle seat), the flight attendants simply decided to replace the seat belt by removing the entire thing. It involved shoving one part back a bit and a lot of yanking, but it turns out that the seat belts are basically just hooked onto a bar with a spring-loaded latch. It doesn't come off EASILY (seriously, they were yanking the hell out of the seat in confusion, and I ended up with a twisted strap because they were having trouble installing the new belt right-side-up before the plane took off), but it can be done. You learn something new every day!

Movies Seen On My Summer Vacation
1. Star Trek
Yes, there is nothing better than Star Trek in its full glory on a 7-inch in-flight screen. (lol) But it was fun and I enjoyed it. Also, my mother apparently thought that the Sulu fencing joke (you know, when Kirk goes "What kind of fighting do you do" and Sulu goes "Fencing") was HILAROUS, and it always cracks me up to discover what parts of movies my mommy likes the best. No really, she couldn't stop laughing. It was cute. ^_^

2. The Time-Traveler's Wife
The logic doesn't make a huge amount of sense, and it's slightly creepy when you really think about how he visited his wife as a child, but overall I quite enjoyed the movie. It was just a tear-jerking, sweet romance with a sci-fi twist. Now, to read the book!

Long story short, it took me two tries to make whole wheat banana pancakes this weekend. The first try was a disaster that cost me an hour of prep/shopping time, melted the edge of my spatula (as I tried to scrape one glutenous mess from the pan), and shattered a glass (my whisk apparently has a handle like a brick that can cause serious bodily/glassware-ily injury when dropped). Luckily, I managed to fix the recipe by Sunday and I emerged triumphant. Revenge has never tasted so sweet. Or banana-y.

I am not even shitting you, but I bought the newest Pepsi flavor today in Japan, and it is [drumroll please...]

No, seriously, it's a normal Pepsi, albeit a pale neon green color, with the "refreshing" aftertaste of cucumbers. And it... actually tastes like cucumbers. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a BAD drink, but it's weird. It's about 20 stages of weird. And drinking too much at one time makes me feel somewhat ill. It's just... dude, it's cucumber Pepsi.

ETA: Don't drink it too fast, either. Because if the carbonation builds up in your tummy, you'll end up burping cucumber flavored bubbles. And THAT my friends, THAT is a strange feeling.

In an update on my last post about the natto diet craze... they lied! They apparently totally lied!! I don't really care either way, since I honestly do like natto and don't even own a scale, so it's not like I'd be able to tell whether the diet worked or not, but apparently they totally made up parts of the program. Oh well. I still had natto last night with dinner; I was just kinda hungry, that's all. I guess this probably means that the natto shortages will end. Poor natto! Gets such a hard rap...

And in another quick news post, I read this article yesterday that claims, shit you not, that the hottest new fashion item is man leggings. Oh, for the love of god, men of the world, do NOT follow this "fashion trend". You'll look like a moron! Women will avert their eyes from you!! Just... Oh just PLEASE do not listen!!!!

Chanmerry.
Okay, this story starts about a month ago, when I spotted a bottle of Hello Kitty "Chanmerry" in the grocery store. Thinking it would be the perfect way to ring in the new year, I picked up a bottle. At the New Year's Eve party, I cracked open the bottle and was instantly aware of several things:

1. The Chanmerry was neon pink, like the subtle shade of cheap dollar-store bubble bath.
2. The Chanmerry smelled like sugar roses and strawberry Bubble Yum (also coincidentally like the subtle shade of cheap bubble bath).
3. The Chanmerry was kept under EXTREMELY HIGH PRESSURE, causing it to explode over a corner of the quilt covering my kotatsu, a corner of my apartment covered in food, and a corner of my leg. (Here, I ask the gentle reader to remember points 1 and 2 to realize exactly how horrified I was.)

So we split the remaining Chanmerry four ways.

johnabedeclared it to be "Hey, pretty good." kinomakotofollowed up with a less enthusiastic "Not as bad as you'd think." applcheeksremarked in horror that it "tasted exactly like a Hello Kitty store smelled." Guess who I agreed with.

Honey.
On a more delicious note, while wandering around the little town at the beginning of our onsen trip, we happened to pass a little honey shop. Literally, it was just filled with honey. But the kind lady was giving out free samples of their hot honey drink, at which point our American minds switched to "free food!!" mode and we guzzled it down.

Oh my !#$%ing god, it was good.

(Five parts water) + (One part fruit infused honey) = A light, sweet, refreshing drink that defies its simplicity to make your taste buds do a tango

We seriously didn't get it. The store sold fruit-fused honey (lemon, cherry, citrus, raspberry, blueberry), maple honey, and a wide variety of honey-related facial products, but the impact was far greater than you would expect. We left the store with a total of 5 jars, full tummies, and the sneaking suspicion that the secret ingredient was pure, unadulterated crack.

Nails.
While kinomakotospent some extra time shopping, applcheeksand I took some time out to get fancy nail art manicures. In a move that I'm sure those who know us would consider quite shocking considering our personalities, Ringo-chan decided on baby pink nails accented by a puffy, bejeweled flower, while I settled on white roses painted on a color best described as "street-walker red". A shock, truly.

The shellacking of base coat and base color proceeded normally, but when time came for the art, both Ringo-chan and I were shocked. We had previously assumed that Ringo-chan's puffy flower would be a well-glued press-on stone of some sort, while my painted-rose look would be achieved through either a sticker or air-brushed stencil.

As it turns out, we were completely wrong on both counts. Ringo-chan's puffy flower was the result of a tiny wet brush swiped quickly through a white powder in order to instantly form perfectly spherical beads, each of which was carefully pressed onto her nail to become one petal of the flower. And my rose? Nothing more than acrylic paint, a minuscule brush, and one of the steadiest painting hands that I've ever seen.

Ringo-chan and I had just been looking for a fun manicure to make us feel like pretty pretty princesses, but we left with the understanding that we had actually been treated to nail art. It also means that I've likely developed yet another expensive habit.

Natto.
After finishing a dinner meant for a small family, or possibly a large sumo wrestler, Mako-chan, Ringo-chan, and I tried not to pass out at the onsen by watching a mindless variety program on Japanese TV. The show, as it turns out, devoted their entire hour to extolling the virtues of a brand new diet: the natto diet.

According to this program, eating two packs of natto a day (one at breakfast, one at dinner; once a day isn't enough!!) provides your body with a steady stream of concentrated natto essence that allows you to lose weight without making any other changes to your lifestyle. This "find" originated from a study conducted in the States, which if anything, increases the probability of a Real Discovery because, quite frankly, I doubt there are major concerns about the study being influenced by, say, the American Natto Association or Natto Growers of the South. If anything, I think that the study raises one major question:

Which is more difficult? Finding Americans willing to eat natto twice a day? Or finding natto in America?

Long story short, I actually quite like natto and go through frequent bouts of marathon natto consumption (Natto omelettes? Not so tasty, unexpectedly so. Natto ramen? Yum!), so I graciously offered my services as a guinea pig for the natto diet.

But the big surprise came after vacation ended and I went to the supermarket to start my test. Although the supermarket was filled with piles of natto, a sign warned about natto shortages that could possibly make the supply of natto unstable. That's right, Mako-chan, Ringo-chan. The show we watched has sparked nation-wide natto shortages. It makes me laugh, but my natto breakfast is quite delicious, so I'll soldier on. Mmmm, sticky, slimy, fermented beans!!

 

I'm so exhausted, and I wasn't even the one on vacation.

Okay, so for two weeks, my little one-bedroom apartment was home to two girls (kinomakoto and applcheeks), five suitcases, and eventually an overflowing closet-full of treats to bring home. In quick bulletpoint form, here is how we spent the past two weeks:

• My First Comiket, which was almost shockingly uncrowded. Seriously. I should go more often.
• johnabe came over to watch the annual Kouhaku music battle on NHK. The big feature was a hysterically inappropriate performance by DJ Ozma who has, among other things, been banned from even the NHK building.
• Shopping, shopping, shopping! There were some extremely scary crowds, but also awesome deals. I spent surprisingly little money, considering that I ended up with: three small jewelry grab bags, one expensive jewelry grab bag, a sock grab bag, two clothing grab bags (each literally filled with 8-9 pieces of clothing, including jackets, dresses, and one blingy belt), one dress, and one pair of boots. Shopping!
• Eating, eating, eating! Seriously, if I never eat a parfait until Spring, it may be too soon.

But the highlight had to be a trip to Hakone and an amazing overnight stay in a ryokan with onsen. Oh, it was amazing. The room had a view of the gardens and was kept toasty warm; the onsens were just this side of scalding and felt gloriously refreshing, especially when a cool breeze kicked up outside; and then there was Maiko-san. Maiko-san was our own personal maid servant woman, and I wanted to take her home with me. Her entire job appeared to be acting cute and polite and serving food until we thought we were going to burst. Our onsen trip came with dinner and breakfast, each of which was a long, drawn out, multi-multi-MULTI course affair served to us in our rooms so that we barely had to move. At one point in time at dinner, Ringo-chan counted 20 dishes PER PERSON. The breaking point came after Maiko-san delivered the final dish, crammed carefully onto the table between us.

"Call the front desk when you're done," she informed us as we stuffed our faces with yet another piece of fish-product that was carefully formed and then carved into the shape of a flower. "I'll come back up to take away your dishes, and I'll bring up dessert."

....Dessert!?

I managed to hold my laughter until after she left the room. Breakfast was another 8 dishes or so, although I was starved like a starving woman for no reason, so I ended up stealing food from everyone else. Needless to say, I was fast asleep in a diabetic coma for most of the train ride back home.

Now I'm just sad and alone in Japan by myself. I say that, but I'm just too exhausted to go out anywhere. Holy crap, I need a day off. ^_^

Last weekend, the first ever Japanese Krispy Kreme opened in Japan, about 5 minutes from where I live. I'm almost grateful that, in normal Japanese fashion for trends, there's always a massive line in front of the place that keeps me from going in. Because, well, OMG Krispy Kreme!!

In other food news, I decided that I missed baking and therefore attempted to make gingerbread men about two weeks ago. The experiment unfortunately failed horribly. Well, I mean, the resulting cookies were delicious, but they certainly weren't gingerbread men. The dough ended up being far too gooey to do anything with, so my options either seemed to be A) work in an extra 3 cups of flour in an attempt to make the dough workable, or B) make gingerbread drop cookies. I couldn't be bothered with the mess, so I made yummy drop cookies instead. I always have to follow a recipe, but I'm actually a good baker and have never had baked goods fail on me before, so I was pretty depressed. I blame the molasses. Stupid molasses...

Seriously, everyone needs to learn to keep me away from the results from our proofreading to Company X. They make me want to fly to America and punch a technical writer. Cute DTP kouhai was struggling with the proofreading sent to us from Company X, so she gave me a bunch of pages and asked me to read through and rewrite the corrections/tell her what the hell the instructions were saying. And apparently, Company X has a barely-literate trained monkey doing the corrections. The style changes that I personally disagree with, I can handle. The stupid grammar changes, I can grit my teeth and bear. (I find nothing wrong with "you" sentences if they make instructions clearer, but some of the proofreaders at Company X are from a school of technical writing that disagrees, so they produce idiotic sentences that, at the very least, do not use "you". In this last batch, they managed to produce a sentence that was passive and included the phrase "that the setting is written to in the memory." Doesn't "is written to in" just look horrible? But it's their damned product, so whatever...)

Anyway, I can deal with those kinds of corrections, but when I started reading the document from my kouhai, I suddenly understood why she was so lost. I've seen first graders with better handwriting. Plus, this person has the type of handwriting where he/she jumps back and forth between capital and lower-case letters, which would fine except for the part that he/she is writing CORRECTIONS and people need to know if you really wanted that B to be capitalized, or if you are just physically incapable of writing a lower-case B. On top of that, there were multiple spelling errors, and while I normally sympathize with poor spelling, it just plain pissed me off when used in proofreading corrections. I'm not even kidding you... this proofreader spelled the word "noise" as "noies". This was hand-written, with possibly the only clearly printed letters in the entire thing. OMG, how I gaped. And don't even get me started on the number of times we were instructed to "preform" operations...

On the plus side, I got TWO random sweets at work today. I have no idea who went on vacation and brought back omiyage, but cookie and mini-roll cake! Score!

I just ate a "Squid Cookie" at work.

Seriously, one of the guys on my floor went... somewhere for his summer break, and came back with "Squid Cookies" for everyone. (In case you're curious, no, my Japanese collegues had never heard of anything like it, either. They just started laughing when they saw the packaging.) The cookie was shaped like a little squid, only it was black due to the squid ink.

How did it taste? It was surprisingly normal. Just a plain old sugar cookie... until you hit the after-taste. Oh dear god, the after-taste. That's when you suddenly went, "Oh holy... squid! SQUID!"

I chewed gum for a very long time afterwards.

I just got handed mystery brownies at work.

I honestly have nothing to say about that. On one hand, it's clear why Kidokoro-san gave me two slices: they're less "brownie" than "chocolate flavored flour-less bread loaf". Dry. Just dry as all hell. On the other hand, dude, chocolate.

For better or for worse, I'd estimate that upwards of 50% of the office is sick. Thanks to modern medicine and ungodly amounts of sleep over the past three days (32 hours sleep, to be exact... 11-1/2 of those on the first night alone) I seem to be getting reasonably better. Some day, my mucus may even agree to leave my sinuses, instead of just making my head hurt and my ears pop. [FYI, during the first draft, I accidentally replaced the word "ears" in the previous sentence with the word "hearts". ....Maybe slightly less better than I thought.]

In other random news, the cold and subsequent exhaustion means that I've been too tired to cook for myself, or even eat much for that matter, so I've been surviving on premade meals, ramen, and curry-pan (curry bread.... oh how I love thee, curry bread!!). Anyway, one morning I went into a bakery to pick up a curry-pan for lunch. They didn't have the regular kind ready yet, so I picked up some other random kind of curry-pan instead. No idea what type it was, although when I bit into it for lunch, I came to the disturbing realization that the bread was pink. Um, er. Okay.

I'm going home to the States in two weeks! I have, like, NO time to finish all this work in time!! [looking seriously worried] Since we have a holiday on Thursday, a half-day of work on Friday (due to an all-company meeting), and I'll need to take a half-day off of work some time next week to visit immigration, it means I have only 8 (minus today, 7) days to complete 17 pages of technical documents and 2 chapters of a user's manual. [whimper] Thinking about it makes my head hurt; maybe I'll just leave now and come back raring to go tomorrow.

In other big news, hurray, new cell phone! It's pretty bitchin' and includes a very very pretty camera, so I fully intend to actually start, you know, taking pictures from now on. Too bad the only thing I can't take a picture of is the pretty new phone itself.

Also, I drank my very first coffee, ever. [CHEER] No, you don't understand what a huge step this is. I've hated coffee all of my life. I didn't like the smell, I didn't like mocha flavoring in desserts, I couldn't even stand a sip of caramel frappuchino. But last week at work, I suddenly realized that the smell of coffee no longer made me want to hurl. It almost smelled... pleasant. So I went to Starbucks (I trusted them to be the most sugar filled) and ordered the least coffee-sounding coffee I could find: Caramel Macchiato. And I drank it. And it was good. Minako-chan cheers because she suddenly feels like she's growing up, and no longer has to resort to hot chocolate (which she's also not entirely fond of; tends to be too chocolate-y or too whip cream-y) when she visits cafes with friends. I, too, can order sugar-filled steamed milk drinks that have coffee added for flavor!! Next up: conquering the dislike of cheesecake.

Fight, Minako-chan!!

I thought about whinging about my migraine on Wednesday, but decided to do a shocking mini-update about V6.

Vehicle
This is somewhat old news, but Nagano-kun got a driver's license for big-rigs. He now has at least three licenses that I know of (the others are normal: car and motocycle). No one knows why he got this license; everyone kept asking him, and he just replied, "It might come in handy, y'know, for a variety show or something." To which everyone responded, "No, no it won't!" But in any case, Nagano-kun seemed VERY excited to be able to drive a giant truck, and if V6 ever explodes, well, now he's got a possible second job.

Valedictory
Inocchi graduated from high school! Hurray! I have no idea when he had the time, but he actually went to school this last year and graduated in 2005. He did extremely well in all of his subjects, too. (Well, except for English, where he barely squeaked by. C'mon, Inocchi! Your sister lives in Nevada! Your nieces are American!!) Anyway, he was asked to give the graduating speech, and broke down just a little bit. Awww!

Visible
Okada-kun's continued acting streak has continued, as "Tiger and Dragon" is now a Friday night drama. It's really good, even though I'm learning far too much about rakugo than can possibly be good for me. But it's really clever and the characters honestly crack me up. I'm still waiting for Okada-kun's movie "Tokyo Tower" to come out on video, since I missed it in theaters, and I've heard vague whisperings that he has another movie coming out in summer. Go Okada-kun!

Vignette
One of my most recent happy purchases has been Inocchi's first every essay collection. He's apparently been writing a semi-regular column in an entertainment magazine for a couple of years now, so they collected some of his essays and published them (with some pictures) in book form. It's really quite interesting to follow Inocchi's somewhat rambling train of thought on a variety of subjects. Some have to do with the actual entertainment business (a typical day on Music Station, how to become a Johnny's Jr, stuff like that), and some just have to do with Inocchi's life (vacationing in Las Vegas with Moriyama Shotaro, his most recent music kicks). More than anything else, it really gets you into Inocchi's mind, which is a somewhat wild place to be.

Vittles
I just moved to Sangubashi, and there's a little ramen joint called "Kookai". It caught my attention not only because of the name, but because there's a giant sign out front showing that it was placed #2 in the VVV6 shoyu ramen ranking. At some point in time, some members of V6 and a random celebrity sat on those seats!! So of course, I had to try out their ramen. And you know what? It was really freaking good shoyu ramen. Good job, V6. Good job.

Veteran
In the biggest V6 news, literally of the year, this year will mark V6's 10th anniversary. Ten years of singing and dancing and flipping and entertaining. Wow. I'll have to do something special for the site, but I don't know what. Maybe I'll, y'know, update. That'll be a shocker...