what we have here, is potentially the most awesome idea in marketing, or the most disgusting product. it’s called “mother’s milk”, and it hails from japan’s dairy land, hokkaidou.

now, i don’t really think they lined up lactating moms and squeezed their boobies to make this product, but you never know… i can’t read the small prints on the side. most likely, it’s just a high-end milk with a little fella suckling on an exposed breast. well, it works for me. i think i’ll buy me a carton.

now there is a grown man who has drunk his wife’s boob juice, and you can read all about it here, on “steve, don’t eat it!” of course, he kinda wussed out and cut the breast milk with some chocolate syrup.

Until now, the foods I’ve sampled for this section have all come from the supermarket. Then one day I realized that a perfectly viable “Steve Don’t Eat It” candidate has been sitting right under my nose for months. Right in my very own refrigerator. And it came right out of my wife! No, I’m not talking about that giant cucumber, perv. I’m talking about breast milk.

That’s right. And not just a little drop off the odd finger, but a genuine slug of freshly-pumped wife juice. (I’ll go ahead and ignore the shiver I just got, and keep typing.)

Thinking about actually drinking breast milk has caused me to ponder the question: Is it not weirder to drink cow’s milk which is truly intended for baby cows? The answer: Hell no! The only thing weirder than me drinking breast milk, is the fact that milk is coming out of my wife’s chest in the first place. It sure as hell didn’t do that when I met her. I’m telling you, the whole thing is lunacy. I love my wife, but does she really have to be such a mammal?

it’s a toss up between this and kimchi coolpis. which would you drink, and how badly would you have to lose a bet?

now i’ve written about family mart before, and i mistakenly called it “famimart”. sorry. the reason is, i guess, i couldn’t comprehend why a convenience store would call itself that. look at it: “famima”. for whatever reason, the word invokes an image of “famine” in my mind, and for a place that sells onigiri (riceballs), this is never a good thing.

hey, family mart head honcho dudes, i know you read this website. try calling it “family mart”. or, if you need to be snappy and trendy, may i suggest “fammart”?

hmm. maybe not.

i actually passed by the famima once when i was strolling through 3rd street promenade in santa monica. it was easy to do. there was a particularly pungent gentleman lollygagging on one of the steel benches on this fine day, and well, how do i put this delicately… he was reeking of well ripened puke with a precocious bouquet of manhattan subway urine, so i hurriedly passed by the famima storefront. sorry if you just finished eating lunch.

on this particular day, i had nothing to do. well, on many days i have nothing to do, which explains my dilly-dallying in this outdoor mall. seeing as how i had mucho time to kill, i figured what the hey, man… i’ll grab my buddy, asahi… beer.

imagine the outrage and mortification when i realize that this poor excuse for an americanized conbini doesn’t even carry alcohol! not even a chu-hi, not that i’d drink that filth. i know it was only two in the afternoon, but when one has to slake his thirst, a dasani just won’t do. what am i supposed to buy here, a pocky or some nonsense?

check out their website here.

3rd street promenade famima

世界

the world, society, the universe

(世= generation, society or public, 界= world)

korean: 세계 [seh geh]

japanese: せかい [seh kai]

i posted earlier on what i think are pretty nifty cosplay… for those of you not in the know, “cosplay” is where people dress up as their favorite characters from anime or video games and attend conventions where people admire each other’s costume, thereby gaining extra nerd power.

what we have here is an actually pretty cool looking gundam costume, painstakingly handmade by… well, i have no idea who’s underneath that space armor. but i guess at some point, the dude (or a gal, i suppose) said “screw it, i’ve run out of cardboard. the trousers will have to do.”

it’s kind of cute, in a way… in a way those “super deformed” characters are cute.

but not nearly as elite as this dude’s interpretation of optimus prime.

i have put up a page where you can download lim jeong hyun’s pachelbel’s canon mp3.

please go here.

in case you are wondering what i’m talking about, please go here

one of my all time favorite places to eat in japan is mos burger. sure, there’s lotteria with its rock bottom prices, and mcdonalds with its ebi (shrimp) burger and that girl who sells it… what’s her name… yuri ebihara, who by the way, was voted 3rd in “which celebrity would you want as your girlfriend?” in japan.

ebihara

forget all that noise, though. when it comes to burgers in japan, mos burger, in my opinion, rules.

here’s why.

they have great service. though i may be a jackass many times as a customer, the stafff is always friendly and always keeps the condescension to a minimum. this is a huge morale booster. also, they have one of the cleanest facilities. i mean, this is saying a lot, as you’d be hard pressed to find a filthy eatery in japan, unless it’s for, you know, atmosphere or something.

and this is one of my favorites… not only do they have a sink for you to wash your scummy paws, they have alcohol dispensers (ethyl, i think, not that isopropyl crap) for that final bacterial destruction before you get your grubby hands on the burger.

and finally, the food. i’m not really sure what the sauce is, but it’s suspiciously similar to chili, the kind with meat in it. it’s almost like a tommy burger (which you would be familiar with, if you lived in southern california), but without the mad cow disease, since all their meat is from australia.

tommy’s burger (though everyone just calls it “tommy burger”)

look at it, and salivate!

the mos burger

i did wonder about the origin of the name. it turns out that it stands for “mountain, ocean, sun”. with a cool name like that, you can just forget about other pedestrian burgery.

here’s one more thing i love about this place. where i used to live, this is pretty much the only place where i could steal wi-fi bandwidth. i’d park my free-loading ass in one of the corners and use the internet to my heart’s content for hours at a time. thank you, mos burger, you are truly a good friend.

all you ever wanted to know about mos burger here

so, you think you know about bulgogi? you think you know yakiniku?

now, this is interior decoration. utilitarian, bold and brave use of open space, and atmosphere that simply screams “post nuclear apocalyptic eatery”. this is so rad.

now this is a manly grill.

the restaurant is called “stand and eat your kalbi”. basically, they have one thing on the menu, and that’s kalbi. well, actually, they don’t even have a menu, the waitress simply walks by and asks “how many?” as you and your party stand around 55 gallon drums outfitted with a grill on top. and for fuel? it’s the good ol’ korean home heating, carbon monoxide spewing “yuhn tan.” (연탄) if you were a kid in the olden days of korea, this oughtta be familiar.

it’s basically a compressed cylinder of charcoal and other carbon combustible that was mainly used to heat the korean house. it worked brilliantly by heating pipes that are laid underneath stone floors of korean homes, thus obviating a need for an indoor stove. the downside is its carbon monoxide emission killed a lot of folks.

the restaurant charges about 13 bucks per person, and as i understand it, the quality is excellent. plus, if you ever wanted to eat in a mad max setting, you can’t come any closer than this place.

mount baekdu holds a special place in many koreans’ heart. it is korea’s most sacred mountain, where, as the creation myth goes, the people of korean descent originated from. it’s a weird tale, so sit on uncle juno’s lap and listen to this story from a long, long time ago…

in the olden days, say about 2333 b.c., give or take a century, there lived a heavenly king dude named “hwa nung”. one day, the king was just chilling, doing what heavenly kings do, you know, order some rain here and there, cause a tsunami over there, hang out with amaterasu, the sun goddess of japan, you know, the usual stuff.

then these suspicious looking animals, a tiger and a bear approach him saying they have a favor they need to beg. bear with me… in the olden days, animals could talk.

king hwan nung says to the carnivores “well, what can i do you for?” the animals reply, “well, we’d like to be humans. so we can wear clothes, and build fire, and eventually play starcraft.”

want to be human, eh? hwanung, of course, thought these two were daft, but he is a compassionate dude, so he decided to help them. says he, “tell you what. if you really want to become human, then take this bunch of garlic and… uh, this here… uh… mugwort, and go sit in a cave for about… oh, 100 days? oh, and yeah, you can only eat that garlic and mugwort.” certainly, he thought, these meat-loving knuckleheads couldn’t stick it out 100 days munching on veggies.

few days pass and of course the tiger, being a tiger that he is, says “you know, screw this. why the hell do i even want to become a human? i’m outta here… i’m going to find me a nice person to make a meal out of.”

the bear merely shrugs, and sticks out the requisite 100 days eating garlic and mugwort. now, i think the bear simply hibernated, thus sort of cheating, but the point is that the bear stuck it out, and for its reward, was transformed into a beautiful woman. and hwan nung married her, and she later gave birth to tangun, who becomes the first korean.

all this happened on mt. baekdu, you see?

well, so imagine the hot tempered koreans when the chinese claim that the mountain belongs to them. it doesn’t really surprise me, really. those guys are always claiming this is theirs and that’s theirs. what must suck for koreans is the fact that not only do they have this dokeshima thing to worry about with japan, now they have to contend with the chinese who make outlandish claims.

this is what happens when your country is sandwiched between some of the most powerful nations on earth… china, japan, and russia.

i say, however, that i’m impressed that they’ve made it this far without losing their identity, despite hundreds of invasions from their less than pacific neighbors. that mugwort, i don’t know what it is, but it must’ve been some potent stuff.

outraged korean protestors munching on a chinese flag.
“mmm… communist flag…”

if you own an apple or dell notebook, you can forget about carrying them on board on korean air, because the airline has banned these notebooks because they can, well, blow up and stuff. it appears though you can take out the battery and check it in your check in luggage.

the whole sordid tale centers around batteries made by sony, and on some notebooks, they have been known to spontaneously combust, which the airlines aren’t too crazy about. oddly enough, though, sony notebooks aren’t in the banned list. yet. (thank goodness. i own a vaio… wait, that’s a sony!)

i used to own a dell notebook, and while it did a splendid job as a doorstop, it is by far one of the shoddiest computers i’ve owned. the keyboard fell apart after about two days (i held it together with some chewed up nicorette and a bit of string), and the little red pointer nub thingie etched a permanent mark on the screen. and it ran for about 45 minutes on battery. but it was pretty handy during winter because it kept me toasty. i also used to use it as weight for benchpressing, but i couldn’t do more than three reps because the thing was a bit too heavy for that duty.

i plan to use it for a boat anchor or something.

at any rate, i can understand airlines banning these potential flaming devices on board. especially korean air, as long as they keep those bibimbahp
(ビビンパ) on the in-flight menu for those of us in the steerage. those things are delicious, and much better than the usual fare you find on other airlines. and those gochujang in little tubes are pretty awesome as well.

from apple insider

i came across this picture of a thirsty dog, and it reminded me of my dog.

a thirsty dog

i believe the dog in the picture is a mixed “jindo”. jindo are dogs from a remote island of korea of the same name. they are what the breeders call “primitive spitz”, that is, they are sleek medium sized dogs with wolf-like appearance.

here’s a picture of my dog, “opie”.

well, i don’t know if he has a wolf-like appearance or not, but he sure is cute. but here’s the thing about jindo dogs. they may look playful and fun to be around, but they are some mean sons of bitches (really), if they don’t know who you are. take my dog, for example. i still live in fear of this animal, lest i piss it off or give him food that he does not like. you don’t understand the look that he’ll give you until you’ve personally seen it. it’s something like “man, you’re an idiot. if you didn’t feed me everyday, i would so kick your ass.” and return to his licking himself.

and i don’t know if all jindos are like this, but mine is very disobedient. i would call him, and he’d ignore me. i’d tell him to stop mauling the nieghborhood kids, he would ignore me. in fact, he only acknowledges my presence when he’s bored with everything else in his dog-life.

but at the same time, jindos are known to be very loyal and very brave, as they would protect their owners from harm, kinda like a korean lassie, i guess. i certainly hope when i fall inside a well and break a leg, my dog opie would go get someone to rescue me. although, i doubt it.

he would just be sitting there licking himself.

jindos are protected natural treasures of korea, but they have a cousin in japan, namely, shiba inu.

his name is “beer”, and his owner was walking him near the takarazuka grand theater when i snapped this picture. see the resemblance? generally, shibas will be smaller than jindos, and shorter. they usually have much more pleasant demeanor, and more mellow. on the other hand, if the two were to ever meet, jindo would probably snack on a shiba.

both dogs are extremely difficult to obtain outside of their native country, though with considerable outlay of cash, it can be done, i hear.