Happy Birthday Moms!

Justin's mom and my mom share a birthday, which was really very thoughtful of them. (Or thoughtful of the respective grandmothers, perhaps?) Justin and I are in Osaka this weekend and commemmorated this auspicious day by mailing Happy Birthday post cards from the 39th floor of the famed Umeda Sky Building.

Happy birthday, Babs! Happy birthday, Kath! We love you both and hope we have sent your most elevated greetings yet!

Sapporo's Unseasonal Seasonal Beer

The Japanese are obsessed with seasons. And the marketing people know it: tons of mass-produced stuff comes in limited-edition seasonal varieties. (We're especially fond of our seasonal wall-hangings.)

The problem is, many of these seasonal varieties are pretty much the same thing you get the rest of the year. Honestly, when you think of "autumn-flavored beer," it ain't straw-colored light lager that comes to mind. This is baseball and barbecue beer I'm talking about. Bad form, Sapporo, bad form - you really ought to change a lot more than the can!

English Lit

Behold the following non-English speaker friendly history class interpretation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:

Nana loves Justin. Then Justin loses his hair, and Nana does not love him anymore.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds."

In other news, have you ever seen a silica gel packet that looked like this?

That's Fukuoka humidity, right there!