Imajuku Campout

If you're wondering why you haven't heard from me in a while, it's because I was busy last week getting ready for a middle school camping trip to nearby Imajuku (though not as busy as coworker Maureen, who  pretty much had to plan the darn thing herself, on top of preparing sub plans and making up for two days of missed planning periods).

I have to admit, I was a bit wary of the trip going into it: after a long string of 60-hour weeks, the prospect of spending 24 hours straight on the job was a little wearying. But the trip ended up being a blast--hot dogs, ghost stories, lots of dodgeball . . . ! Well worth the cost in terms of sleep deprivation and planning time.

Anyway, owing to student privacy concerns, I don't want to post too much about the trip. But here are a few photos of the campground, sans students.

The view from the hill. We had to walk all the way up from the train station down by the water.

For our meals, the kids made these cute origami bowls for us to put our grub in.

The middle schoolers planned the meals, so it's not surprising they consisted mainly of hot dogs, chips, and sugary drinks. (Though Maureen did try to sneak some fruit into the mix.)

The steps leading up to our cabin, #4.

The cabins were nice--clean, dry, with tatami bunks. Nothing like our Korean camping experience, though, which basically consisted of sleeping in a two-star hotel that happened to be next to some woods.

Here's cabin 3 in the morning, with the hills behind.

The weather was really nice the first day (I even got a sunburn), but the second day was drizzly. I came prepared with an umbrella, but Kevin (the science teacher) was forced to fashion this stylish poncho out of a trash bag.

Nice.

Nana Drinks Weird Stuff For Your Entertainment: Sapporo The Melon Cola

Justin picked this odd neon green beverage up for me at a convenience store the other day. Note that he did not drink it himself. In fact, I am noticing a disturbing lack of weird things drunk by Justin lately. Is this my karmic payment for the fact that I always make him taste things first in restaurants so we can figure out what they are?

This is not the first time we have had melon cola in Japan. Lotteria, a burger chain, also has it as a fountain drink, and if I recall correctly I first got it by mistake thinking "melon" was a weird pronunciation of "lemonade." (Intriguingly, they have coke, melon cola, and ginger ale, but no "cider," or Sprite-style drink, and what looks like orange cola in the fountain is actually orange juice. The things we learn by trial and error!) But it is the first time we have had The Melon Cola, with a capital The. Since I come from the city of The Ohio State University, emphasis on the The to distinguish it from all those fraudulent Ohio State Universities out there, this did not strike me as odd until just now, when I had to type it.

The best thing about The Melon Cola is the awesome penguin packaging:

If you look at the bottom line of text in the top picture and on the left, by the kicking penguin foot, in the second, you will see the same "No Fruit Juice" characters which should have been my tip-off back with the Hypno-Cow Apple Milk. The more you know!

Back in Edinburgh, Justin and I made our Norwegian friend Anne Marie taste a sour apple Jolly Rancher, not because it's any good (she spit it out almost immediately) but because it is a critical point of reference for Americans. How else could I describe the color of this beverage? Nothing else in this world is quite the same shade of unnatural nuclear green.*

Fortunately, The Melon Cola tastes nothing like sour apple Jolly Ranchers, and much better than Hypno-Cow milk. It was mild, not anywhere near as syrupy and tart as I expected. It doesn't taste like melon in the sense of cantaloupe, which would be the most logical assumption, but maybe sort of like a sweet green apple plus green grape juice. Totally acceptable, although probably not something I'd seek out.

I also want you all to know that in the pursuit of this blog post, I spilled The Melon Cola all over my kitchen table and floor:

Admittedly my own fault for holding the open bottle in my hand while trying to pick up a glass of water by the rim with the same hand. Did you know liquid flows out when you tip the bottle over? To my surprise, a bit of soap and water on that washcloth seems to have taken care of it. I was anticipating weeks of sticking to the floor when I walked by. I thought this might mean that The Melon Cola is sugar-free, so I took a closer look at the nutrition facts label:

The first is calories. The second is protein and the third is fat, with 0 grams of either. Number four, best I can translate, is "Charcoal water transformation substance," which I appear to have consumed eleven grams of. (Alternately, if you go by the description near the penguin butt, it is "charcoal acid drink material," which I'm not sure is an improvement.) This may explain why the soda did not leave a sugary residue on the floor, but does make me wonder what sort of residue it left on my digestive tract. But at least it had zero mg of sodium!

*Although maybe you could make an argument for mutagen.

Costco Pilgrimage

Sometimes when you've been living in a new country for a bit you start to overlook those unremarkable events that make up an important part of your experience. For example, you probably wouldn't think of Costco as an essential part of life in Japan, but you'd also be hard-pressed to find any expat in Asia who would turn down the offer of a Costco trip. That's because in just about every major Asian city from Shanghai to Sapporo, Costco is the cheapest source of Western staples like peanut butter, sausage, and cheese.

So when a co-worker offered us a ride to Costco this morning, we jumped at the chance!

But there's more to an expat's Costco visit than cheap groceries, as Costco's "food court" (read: concession stand) is also the only real option around for cheap American-style pizza and hot dogs. Despite the ensuing stomach ache, those treats alone would have been worth the journey--including those harrowing 20 minutes when we got lost, accidentally blew through a tollbooth without taking a ticket, and threw ourselves on the mercy of a thankfully kind toll collector who could speak a little English.

As it is, we also came away with several pounds of peanut butter, dried cranberries, and Quaker Oats. All in all, a stirring success!

Formatting Weirdness

Wow--the formatting on that last post went really wonky, didn't it? I think I'll go back to the simple layout from now on!

Say Cheese!

It's tough to find good cheese in East Asia--tough enough that every now and then, they'll devote a whole restaurant to it, like some sort of delicacy.

Such is the case with Cheese Dining Angelo, a restaurant in Tenjin that specializes in all things cheesy.

(Many thanks to our coworker, Dayle, for showing us the place and guiding us through the menu!)

The menu at Angelo is built around a bunch of different types of fondue, some familiar, some exotic (think "squid ink"). We stuck mostly to the familiar stuff: plain, basil, tomato, and sesame (our one adventure).

 Here's plain (on the left) and basil (which was my favorite).

Here's tomato (on the left) and sesame.

As per usual, you're given bread and veggies to dip in the fondue--but the addition of squash, okra, and little cocktail weenies provided a distinctly Japanese touch. (The Japanese are obsessed with hot dogs.)

We also had a great caesar salad with hunks of bacon and tofu in it. The cheese, ironically enough, left something to be desired (it was that chewy, plasticy Asian cheese), but the dressing was awesome--a hint of smoked red pepper, I think.

After our fondue, we indulged in some risotto made inside a giant wheel of Gran Padano cheese.

Our deserts were also cheese-themed. Here's a surprisingly light baked cheesecake.

And a tart with cheese, nuts, and chocolate. (Plus the world's smallest fork.) Yum!

A Post-Payday Trip to the Second-hand Store

Stuff in Japan is expensive. No one denies this. But when people move house, they tend to offload anything that doesn't fit in the new place at one of Japan's delightfully eclectic second-hand stores. Here are some highlights from our trip to the local "ACB" last weekend.

Most of the store like a well-stocked Salvation Army, but with a much lower ratio of clothes to other stuff.

A super-comfy double-recliner loveseat for 21,000 yen (about $230)? Yeah, we totally bought that. In fact, I'm sitting on it right now!

While we were checking out and arranging delivery they gave us some chilled tea. For some reason I seem to have felt really smug about this.

After we purchased our awesome couch, we started poking around, and things quickly got weird (as they are wont to do in Japan). The copy on this mini beer fridge reads:

"Drinking a glass of beer helps you release fatigue and mental stress when you come back home. Just pull down the lever and get a chilled canned beer for your relaxing time. COOLING CUBE creates a healing time and space beyond reality for you. SINCE 2003."

Yeah.

Not one, but three slot machines, each for under $600 bucks.

The obligatory pachinko machine.

An 88-key electric piano for . . . $125?

And, naturally, a mechanical bull.

(Seriously, I'm not kidding--that's actually a mechanical bull.)

Muromi Paper Lantern Festival

The Muromi River is one of the two little rivers that flow together at the point by our house. Yesterday, Nana and I (along with a bunch of co-workers led by Maureen, whom you may remember as the leader of our little Dazaifu adventure) rode our bikes a few miles upriver for the Muromi Paper Lantern Festival. 

The Muromi festival is just one of the countless local lantern festivals celebrated throughout East Asia. Though pretty humble when compared with some of the bigger festivals, the sight of all those lights flickering in the cool evening air isn't something I'll easily forget.

Here are some photos (and videos!) from our night:

The majority of the lanterns were simple colored paper bags with candles inside, arranged in a wild array of patterns.

Most of the patterns appeared to be abstract, though there were a few we could identify (fish, birds, something that was either a mermaid or a top-down view of a veil dance).

 

The lanterns marking the edges of the footpaths were all made by local schoolchildren.

 Some of these added some really neat colors to the mix.

 Others simply have a lot of personality, like this ogre . . .

 . . . and his red-faced companion.

It's hard to get the full sensation from these photos, though. For one, the spread was huge, and with the cool breeze blowing up the river, the lanterns were constantly flickering like waves of grain.

Here's an attempt to catch the flickering:

And here's an attempt to give a sense of the scale of the thing: