Tigers and Cranes

I present you dear readers with some more messed up ice cream flavors.

First up, abalone flavored ice cream.

“Dracula”. Is it Dracula flavored? Does it taste like an old Eastern European dude? Or is it garlic flavored? Wow. I’d go with the old Eastern European dude flavor. Garlic? That’s just messed up.

Deep Sea Flavor. Hm?

Okay, I really hope this flavor really exists. If it doesn’t, I think someone should invent it. Shochu flavored? Yes, please.

For even more messed up ice cream flavors, visit
Mainich Daily News

USB powered “Sukkiri Mask”. Wow.

Puhahahaha!

Buy it from Thanko
via Gizmodo

Canned food.

Is there any more romantic image that is conjured up in one’s head when one softly whispers these two words? More so than “Coq au Vin”, or “Filet Mignon”, or even “Chocolate-dipped Strawberries”, to me, the words “Canned Food” conjures up images of times bygone, where a hobo’s only tool is a twig and some small fire and he can invariably cook a veritable feast for himself and his tramp brethren. Indeed, Popeye is nothing but a total wuss until he gets his abnormally large forearm and hands around a can of spinach.

Anything can be canned, you name it. What is the most exotic food you’ve eaten? If you said “Bun-deh-gi” [번데기], then you are an impresario of culinary adventurism. Also, that’s disgusting.

Ah yes, silk worm pupae… CANNED!

On the other hand, I’d be hard pressed to say “french fries” or anything like that, but indeed, they do exist, albeit in a “shoe string potato” form. What in blazes is a “shoestring potato”? I tried one, when I was a wee lad, and perhaps I dug into an old one(It said it expires in 1982), but the taste and texture was like munching into a stack of old newspaper.

One thing I certainly didn’t expect to find is canned oden. But the premise is brilliant! You certainly can never find a decent oden place when you really need one, that is, early in the morning or late at night when you’re drunk. And at home. By stocking up on these “ko-tengu” brand oden-in-a-can, you can be sure to have drinking snack anytime of the day. Just think of the possibilities.

I hear you can find one in a vending machine near Akihabara.

Ho! Even a quail egg.

And if you happen to be especially lazy like me, and can’t be bothered to use proper pots and utensils, you can simply pop the top and warm the can up over your stove! True hobo style!

I’m really taken with this product, since I know how difficult it is to get good oden sometimes. Sure, you can always pop over to your local Lawson convenience store if you happen to live in Japan, but I just don’t know. I don’t really trust their oden, as it’s usually uncovered, and whenever i get it, it’s always sort of luke-warm, and I’m really never sure how fresh it is.

Lawson oden. WAAAY overpriced.

an amusing website about “illegal brands” that i found online caught my eye. It reminded me about the time when i found a pair of cheap headphones in a minimart, and the brand was “SORNY”. I don’t know… i do like saying “SORNY”. Hm, i wonder if anyone actually looks at the said merchandise and thinks “yes, it sounds like SONY, so it must actually be pretty good.”

A “SQNY”? that’s pretty clever. i guess they’re targeting those with myopia or drunks. I wonder what country produces these cheap knock offs.

I think this is more a parody than a rip off. Of course “kuma” is japanese for a bear.

In a similar vein, here’s “PAMA”. I like the fact that the leaping puma has a perm. “Pama” is a japanese and korean for “perm”. heheheh.

And this. Well, it’s a candy, but made to look like a box of Marlboros. When i was little, i used to always buy similar candies, well, actually they were gum, and it even had white powder so that when you blew into it, a puff of white “smoke” would appear. Hey, it worked! Got me hooked on smoking.

What does the pack say? “warning: are you not going to look carefully? Look carefully~!! It’s not cigarettes, it’s “yuht”(korean candy)” Zalbollae= will you look at it carefully?

From the photo, it looks like there’s even a menthol version. Get one for your favorite kid!

from bizarre area

Have you seen this? You are at a store, let’s say, and there’s a bratty kid causing a huge ruckus, generally making life hell for the parent and everyone else around the little thug. You’d think a firm disciplining would be in order, but in the current PC climate, it’s somehow seen barbaric to yell at a kid, and heaven forbid should you smack a kid around. It’s gotten so that were one to lay a smack down in a form of corporal punishment, the blasted kid would snitch on you, and off you go to the slammer, and the kid, well, i suppose the little puke deserves what s/he gets because they’d be hauled off to a foster home or a foster parents who would probably scar the little bastard for life. I think.

I bring this matter up to my friends, who for various reasons, have chosen elementary school teacher as their profession (i’m guessing they are masochists), and the question i pose to them seem reasonable.

“Hey, so if your kid misbehaves in class, do you smack them around?”
They look at me like i’m some kind of a child-abusing monster, glaring at me and replying,

“No, you jerk. That would be wrong. I try to nurture the child, and gently remind them about the necessity of social politeness without damaging their self esteem. You jerk.”

Wha…? I press on.

“But i mean, let’s say the kid’s REALLY bad… so bad that he is really disruptive. You would at least cuss ‘im out, yeah?”

“NO! Don’t you understand? The children at that age are really impressionable. You have to have a gentle hand in reminding them that while a disruptive behavior is undesirable, you have to tell them that they are loved and expression of individuality is a wonderful thing! You jerk!”

Oh, man.

You see? This is what’s wrong with kids these days. All this coddling and worrying about their feelings have turned the lot of them into little hellions, out of control, acting like lunatic monkeys when they don’t get their way. This lamentable situation is compounded in a country like korea, where a kid, especially a boy, is pretty much allowed to do as they please until junior high or maybe even high school. I’ve been reading stories of mothers getting BEAT UP by their young sons because the mom wouldn’t let little kimmie play lineage online. If i was a father, and i came home to that, you can bet that there’d be more than a gentle “tut-tut, that’s not nice.”

What they need to do is to teach those little punks that life ain’t peaches and cream. No sir, it’s more like gruel and a kick to the ass. Sooner the young ‘uns learn this harsh lesson in life, sooner they’ll settle down to becoming a cog in the machine.

In a well disciplined, take-no-nonsense machine.

So this boot camp for pansy kids in Pohang, korea, is just the thing for your tubby lad. Basically, as a parent, you trick your kid into taking a ride with you to the industrial town of Pohang (where they grow things like destroyers and steel beams, not pansies) with promises of ice cream cones and choco-pies, and when you get there, kick their ass out of the car with a gleeful “See you in a week!”

And what exactly happens in this boot camp for children? Well, they wear a military uniform, even down to the heavy steel helmet (”You will learn to bow!”) and roll around in mud and stand around in freezing water, US navy seal style. And of course, the ever-present drill seargent who take no gruff from no one is constantly yelling and mocking the kids.

Overnight, these children find themselves transported from the world of video games and junk food to a Spartan beachhead where unforgiving drill sergeants boast they can make cows bark and dogs moo.

The teenagers do push-ups and deep knee bends. With barking sergeants tailing them, groups of seven puffing teenagers charge into freezing water, balancing 120-kilogram, or 265-pound, black rubber boats on their heads. They turn in cellphones and eat and sleep in Marine barracks, getting up at 6:30 and going to bed at 10:30. Here they are nothing more than numbers.

No. 227 is Kim Ki Seol, the teenager who slept through the amphibious landing exercise.

“My parents sent me here because I always pick fights with my brother and play computer games too much. They said I should learn the value of family while training here,” the glum boy said, looking at his sand-caked sneakers. “I wish this program would be over soon. There is no fun here.”

“I thought my parents were joking,” said Kim Soo Ram, a cheerful 13-year- old who said her parents drove her here. “I was virtually dragged in here. But now I kind of look cool in the uniform.”

Does this seem harsh? Well, if you saw some out of control kids in korea, and the hell they can raise, you might quickly come around to the idea that harsh discipline is sometimes the only way to go.

number 393 might have to come back to this camp maybe couple more times…

from International Herald Tribune

i remember seeing these guys for the first time.

they were deep yellow, nay, i daresay ochre in color. and they smelled a bit funky, and to my skeptical eyes, definitely slimy. i am, of course, talking about sea squirt, alternatively called “hoya” [ホヤ] in japanese and “mung-gae” [멍게] in korean.

watching an NHK special program one day about some industrious japanese fishermen(and women) who harvest these animals, i was struck by the sheer amount of bizarre creatures that inhabit the earth. even more strange is the human desire to snack on these weird critters. At first i thought the fisherman were harvesting apples. Then i thought to myself, “self, now you know that apples don’t grow in the ocean. Apples come from an apple plant, and you gotta dig them carefully from the ground and wash them thoroughly”.

So these weren’t apples, then. more like reddish, round, spiky, squirty, sea slugs(actually, a type of anemone, i think). I watched the program in fascination as the fish dudes pulled up a thick rope from the depths, and dangling on this rope were maybe a hundred of sea squirts, all of them spurting jets of water from their spiny protrusions in concerted panic. Undisturberd by this rather rude behavior from these invertebrates, the fisherman calmly pulls out his pocket knife, makes couple of neat incisions on the creature, and chomps into it as if it were an aquatic apple. With a big grin on his wizened face, he proclaims “yummy.”

A few days after watching the program, i was dining with my parents, and they took me to a sushi restaurant. Now, i’m not much of a sushi connoseur, bypassing such delicacies as fatty tuna and salmon for cooked egg and raw squid. But i was really excited because as a freebie, the sushi joint threw in a plate of sliced sea squirts. Oh, how i closed my eyes as i stuffed one in my mouth, imagining that i am the grizzled veteran of the sea, rocking on my trusty boat the “sea princess”, as i pull out my rambo knife to slice open a sea squirt and taking a bite out of it as one would with a mango. As i was lost in my reverie, my dad said “what the hell are you doing?” bringing me back to reality.

sea squirt sashimi

The taste, if you’ve never had a sea squirt, does take some getting used to. It’s definitely more pungent than uni, with sort of a… well, a minty taste. At first i spat it out in disgust, and cursed my fellow diners for ordering this disgusting slimy excerement of the sea. But now, man… i can’t get enough of the stuff.

Goes really well with beer and sake too.

most people will agree that japanese food, on the whole, is pretty delicious. anyone who says otherwise is probably a communist.

generally speaking, compared to korean cuisine, the taste tends to favor the subtle versus ass-kicking spicy, sweeter versus salty, and presentation versus quantity. of course there are those who are often disappointed with quantity, especially those who are used to “eat till you burst” mentality of korean cooking.

out of many dishes and foodstuff that most japanese enjoy, yet most westerners(at least the cowards that i know) recoil in horror at is ikura, or salmon roe. in other words, salmon eggs. i often wondered what it is about salmon that makes ‘em lay such comparatively huge eggs, unlike cod or flying fish. well, i suppose flying fish have to lay smaller eggs, after all, they have to fly and can’t be weighted down by large eggs in their belly. i still can’t believe that there are fish that fly. that just seems ridiculous, in a way that there are birds that swim.

once i was enjoying one of my favorite lunchtime meals, a steaming bowl of miso ramen with a side of ikura gohan[イクラご飯] (rice topped with numerous large salmon eggs… oof. i’m getting myself hungry.)

it’s like eating 200 salmons in one meal!

and it was crowded that day, so while i occupied a table for four, i felt guilty as there were diners milling about looking for a table. there was this elderly american(white) dude, and so i told him that he could sit at the table while i got up to look for a counter to sit in front of. he insisted that i dine with him, and his wife, a japanese, will join us in a bit.

you know how it goes. you can’t just ignore your dining partner when you share a table, and the talk got to asking about what each other does for a living. of course i told him i’m a lazy wastrel whom, instead of being at work like most normal people, hang about in a ramen place all day, and as for my dining companion, astonishingly enough, the old dude is the founder of joico.

what, you don’t know joico? they make hair products, like hair gel, shampoo and such. i used to use their product, especially the joi-gel. that thing smelled incredible.

anyway, i digress.

as we were having this pleasant chat about hair products, his wife joins him, and three of us got to talking about this and that. the wife points to my bowl of ikura gohan and says, “ah, so you like ikura gohan”, which struck me as a particularly obvious observation, but i merely nodded and said something like “damn straight, lady.” she prattled on about her sons or something or other, my mind distracted by perfect orbs of salty, gooey goodness. then she says “you know, the word ‘ikura’ isn’t japanese”.

hm? really?

“we used to travel to russia on business trips, and they are absolutely in love with fish eggs too. “caviar” i think americans call it.” true. caviar and vodka. i know all about it. i watched james bond “a view to a kill” and stuff. she continues, “well, ikura is actually a russian word. and somehow the japanese ended up with it to describe what you’re shoveling in your mouth.”

whoa, there we go. if you make the right effort and show some courtesy, not only do you get to meet the founder of an awesome hair product company, but you learn something new as well.

as a proof that the vodka swilling comrades up north do indeed fancy fish eggs, i have here a photo of, of all things, caviar or ikura vending machine. sure, in america they have milkyway and snickers vending machine, and in the supposedly second world country called russia, they get ikura vending machine. life just isn’t fair.

picture from english russia

getting a bank account in japan is not as easy as some people think it should be. it’s not enough that you have couple hundred en in you pocket and decide “well, to be a responsible adult, i’ll have to start a savings account. i’ll just pop into this here mizuho bank.”

for the most part, one has to be able to prove that he or she is a permanent resident of japan, and that means making sure you have the “gaijin card”, or at least some proof that you aren’t simply wandering through the country without a legal visa.

one thing that makes me scratch my head about japanese banks, ATMs, in particular is the fact that well, ATMs close for the night. what? it’s not like there’s an elderly dude sitting inside the ATM box handing out cash, so what’s the deal with withdrawing cash at night? it’s not like there are roving bands of robbers jacking money from ATM goers(or is there?) another infuriating thing: why do i get charged an extra fee when the bank is closed, say, on a holiday or something? i’m really beginning to think that maybe there is an old dude handing out money inside an ATM box.

one cool thing about japanese ATM is where the money pops out. usually, in america, there’s a slot on the face of the ATM where money is spat out(with annoying, insistent beeps), but most ATMs i’ve seen(okay, just MUFG), cash pops out from below the panel, into a type of a rectangular well, in which you reach into to pull out bills. which is kinda cool i guess, if you’re trying to be all secretive as to how much cash you’re pulling out. and i’ve personally never done this, because i’m pretty lazy, but everyone has a check and savings book which they can insert into the machine to have ATM print balance and whatnot on to the book. nifty.

but after hour fee still sucks.

speaking of banks, i found this cool coin bank called “life bank” that is, for lack of better words, interactive.

basically, when you start off with no coins in the bank, it shows a little figure living in a state of profound broketitude, but as you add coins, he starts to acquire more and better living arrangements, thus encouraging one to be good about depositing coins in to the device. it sounds like a pretty good way to get your wastrel kids to start saving some coinage instead of always blowing it on snoopy or winnie the pooh cell phone straps.

made by TOMY for about usd $40.

from spluch

NOTE: Due to the holidays and my obligations to the family and friends(yes, i hate to say it, but as much of a scrooge as i might be, sometimes i can’t seem to escape the clutches of tradition), updates on this blog will be kinda sorta light.

-JUNOSORA

now, on with the post.

okay, so it sometimes puzzles me when different cultures have a vastly different view on what constitutes a fair meal. take for example, pizza. now who doesn’t like a piping hot gooey-cheesy slice o’ pizza now and again?

well, i remember the first time i tried it, and i thought it was the most disgusting thing i’ve ever had the displeasure of eating. maybe it was becasue it was chuck e. cheese’s pizza, but seriously, i thought it was a cruel joke from that giant mouse.

most western culture(with possible exception of italians) seem to turn its nose on such delicacy such as our wonderful friends, the mollusks. i’m talking about those freaks of nature, squid and cuttle fish. both in korea and in japan, kids and businessmen just can’t seem to get enough of these protein laden, tentacle dangling snack of the ocean.

in many ways, a dried up squid is an excellent snack, low in fat and high in protein and loaded with chewy goodness. what more do you want in your snack?

some snack makers have taken our good friends the squid even further in snackology. not content to merely have shredded dried squid to chew over a bottle of asahi or a hite, they’ve created…

SWEET SQUID CHUNKS!

hello kitty endorses munching on squid chunks. i firmly belive that the word “chunks” is a surefire way to guarantee sales of any food item.

next we have “squid peanut”. why do peanuts and squids go together so well? what is the mysterious bond between squid and peanuts? what is the flavor synergy at work here? and what is that squid doing to that peanut? looks kinky.

this thing is called “오징어 땅콩” [o-jing-uh thahng kohng] (come on, say it aloud. it’s really fun to say!)
and is veeery similar to a bag of “ika-pina”, a japanese version of squid and peanuts.

hakodate in southern part of japan’s hokkaidou is well known for their squiddery. here, there are many boats that set out each night, with “squid lights” blazing to hunt for these slippery, slimy mollusks. here, you can get some of the freshest seafood known to man, and hakodate is very well known for their hairy crabs(really), but today, we’re talking about squids.

this is a picture of a manhole cover from hakodate. and you can see, how delectable these squids look, how cute and ready they are to please your palate.

the squid boats are outfitted with these brilliant light bulbs, and at night you can see into the distance, out in the sea, these squid boat’s lights as they haul in their tentacled bounty.

once, flying from tokyo to seoul on a late night flight, i looked out the window and rubbed my eyes as clearly we were flying over the east sea/sea of japan, and i thought i was hallucinating because below me were countless number of brilliant lights that shone along the coast of japan in the ocean, as well as korea as i approached incheon.

these lights were being shone from the squid boats, and it was really interesting to see them because from the air, one could see the extent of each country’s maritime border by noting how far out to the sea each squid boat was.

oh, and the whole dokdo/takeshima thing between japan and korea? i really think it’s all about who gets to catch squid around these islets.

i recall one time helping my parents move from their old house into a new one, and being horrified at the amount of dust that lay underneath their bed. these dustbunnies apparently have multiplied as they usually do, and donning a bandana over my nose to vacuum these infernal dust particle was a really a trying experience.

sorry to gross you out and all, but inevitably, my nostrils sucked in quite a large amount of said dust. it was really disgusting. i asked one of my sisters: “hey, what should i do? the inside of my nose is all gunked up,” she replied non-chalantly “lavage it”.

“lavage”?

having never taken french (and it sounded french, as she pronounced it “lah-vah-ji”), i merely blinked and nodded and said “yeah, time for some lavage action.” didn’t want to sound like a total ignoramus, you know.

it turns out lavage is the act of drawing up water through one’s nose holes, holding it for a while, then expelling it. wikipedia defines it thus:

Antiseptic lavage is a means of washing, especially of a hollow organ, such as the stomach or lower bowel, with repeated injections of warm water mixed with an antiseptic or antifungal solution. Antiseptic lavages are commonly used as a treatment to pericoronitis of wisdom teeth.

i really hope my sister meant the inside of my nose and not my lower bowel.

so, i tried it by cupping a handful of water and giving it a good snort, and was immediately blinded by pain as if someone gave me a good punch to my nose. i spluttered water out of my nose, me now being a choking, tearing, coughing mess. i’m sure my sister was out there somewhere chuckling to herself.

well, does it work? i dunno, i suppose, as my nose produced prodigious amount of snot, and i’m sure my umteenth nose blowing probably loosened all that dust. but, man, what a way to clean your nose.

if i had known about this device, the nasal irrigator, it might have saved me some pain and humiliation. according to gizmodo, you fill it up with salt water and squirt the blasted thing into your nostrils, and voila! it’s like taking a shower inside out. why the salt water? well, it seems that saline is less painful than freshwater when you snort it up your nose. kinda like saline doesn’t hurt your eyes as much as fresh water or bleach does. if you suffer from chronic stuffed nose (boogurus fullitis), maybe you should get one of these.

you mean to tell me you still pick your nose to clean your nostrils? that’s just uncivil.

from gizmodo