full of beans

I went to the local Babies R' Us for some fun stuff for the baby boy.  I was eager to find a tunnel for him to crawl through and Babies R' Us did not let me down.  I found a cute little red one with some cartoon characters on it that I did not recognize.  

After I got it back to the apartment a friend looked at it and told me that the character was famous in Japan.  She also said he was a character who has a head full of bean paste.  Wa wa what? 

I looked it up and found that it is Anpanman.  You can check him out here.  I thought it was pretty weird but then started thinking about Sponge Bob Square Pants. I mean, how well does that translate?  

last night's sunset

fer-e-ner

Next time you go to the grocery store and are at the dairy section check out all the different milk. There is skim milk, 1% milk, 2% milk, whole milk, buttermilk, that coffee mate creamer stuff, half and half, rice milk, soy milk, whipping cream...it is all there.  It is quite easy to take for granted that you know what it all is. 

My biggest grocery store dilemma so far is the milk aisle.  Imagine all of the above listed milks with Japanese labels, like here.  I have the most difficult time figuring out how to buy skim milk. I had a little tutorial today with a friend. She showed me that on the back you can read these percentage points that say, for example, 1.5% may be listed on the back and that is the closest to skim I have gotten. 

In addition, some of the milk here will say 70% or some other number indicating it is milk and something else.  Something else being ??? soy milk I guess.  Don't know.  

So, next time you are at the store appreciate your ability to speak the language. And next time you see a fer-e-ner realize how exhausting just buying milk is  

I Spy

Life in Japan, during the week at least, has been limited to Rokko Island.  I hope to change that after I get settled and get comfortable with the trains.  

But, from my balcony, only at night, I can see the lights on the world's longest suspension bridge.  Check it out. 

How Do Describe It?

We headed out today to do some furniture shopping.  A lot of the stores here are ginormous.  We had an appointment at the furniture store, because you need an escort to guide you through all of the massive amount of furniture.  Our salesman/guide was lovely and patient as I had a hard time making up my mind with so much information overload.  

The furniture store was in a large shopping area called the ATC. It was full of shops and food and people.  Some of the people were teens dressed up in a way that I cannot exactly describe. 

They were dressed up in costumes. Costumes of the most colorful, creative, and extraordinary variety.  I wish I had pictures to show you, but I was too chicken to start snapping photos of them.  But I really should have snapped away because do you know what?  They were taking pictures of one another.  Like four teens would be taking pics of another posed teen. One dressed up person would place themselves in an interesting pose and other dressed up teens would take close-up pictures.  

For instance, one young lady was in a punked out, army green, military looking outfit.  Well, military looking except the shorts were super shorts and she had knee socks on with some 3-inch platform boots.  She was laying on the ground with a little brown box that had a red cross (like a medic box) on it carefully placed in front of her.  She was oh so carefully positioned with her little box and also...wait for it...two rolls of toilet paper!!! Huh?  Her friend snapped pictures and then the model took the toilet paper, unrolled some and carefully placed it on her body in various places.  Uh...okay.  I was mesmerized.  I so wished I could just go up and ask somebody what the heck was going on, but, alas, I had to sit in wonder.  

I came home, did a little research and found this which I think explains what was happening.    I would post a link to pictures, but you all can search for the photos yourself.  It is worth it to see the fantastic fun of it all.  

Wow. 

sorry

It has been a kind of difficult week.  I am having a hard time adjusting so there was no posting.  Let the posting resume.