Individually wrapped for your convenience

One of the smaller, yet still totally interesting things about Japan is their obsession with individually wrapping things. It makes giving things like omiyage (souveniers/gifts) easier, but I can't help but feel a little wasteful when I'm not giving things to people (which, it turns out, is often). Do they not snack?

I suppose it also has another (unintended? Or perhaps intended...) effect: I feel really guilty every freakin' time I open up one of the packages. Or finish a package. My brain goes, "What?! You just ate a WHOLE PACKET/PACKAGE BY YOURSELF. Pig." to which my stomach immediately responds with, "BUT THEY WERE SO SMALLLLLLL."

Seriously. Look at those packages I'm holding. Those butterfly cookies... two per package. I've had to unwrap three of those packages. And when I wanted to stop at five, well, I had to eat six cause the package came with TWO and I'm not about to waste one of those cookies...

I suppose I'd guess that omiyage, really, is the culprit behind the whole individually wrapped phenomena, and why Japan probably won't do away with it any time soon. It's a huge part of the culture here, wrapped up (lol) with the food tourism that seems to be pretty popular in Japan. You have to be able to easily give one to everyone, without your fingers ruining the presentation or what have you. Perhaps it's partially for germs as well, but something in me kind of doubts that.

Individually wrapped packages has had an interesting (and benevolent) side effect on the Japanese packaging industry as well. Japanese packages, especially compared to American packages, are ridiculously easy to open. Practically everything has some kind of perforation or cut opening or, as usually the case, a little triangle notch and triangle shaped bump on opposite sides of the package, indicating where you're supposed to tear. It really does make things easier, cause you're like "oh, I just tear here." Simple. I've found myself looking for them on packages and getting slightly annoyed when I don't find them.

Now this, is cognitive design right here. The Japanese packaging producers have offloaded the work of having to spend the time to look for where the slit (if there is one in the first place) and the skill it takes to open one of those small individually sized packages (or hunt for a place in the wrapper that looks like it has the most give) onto the package with two small changes to the package. People, therefore, are less likely to get frustrated eating your product, and will eat it faster and are more likely to enjoy the experience.

Ah, I love thinking about design sometimes. :) I miss taking those classes.

Also, note, that yes, that is a Ritz crackers (cheese) package. Inside of it are two of those shorter packages. I've also seen those mini packs, but I've yet to see anything bigger than that. They have the normal crackers... which are good, but these actually taste like the Ritz crackers back home. And in the absence of both Cheez-Its and Goldfish, well, Ritz has stepped up to the plate.

I gotta say, that's one thing I had not expected over here in Japan. That I would revert back to my middle/high school age self where I come home from school (literally too haha) and sit down and eat a snack. Good god. Or that omiyage, while annoying to have to get (especially when you have large schools or multiple schools; 40+ teacher schools add up really fast) are wonderful to receive. And oh man. The teachers will walk up to me and bring me snacks and go "Here's this thing from this teacher cause they went here. You should try it."

You can't say no to something like that.

My primary JTE who sits next to me too, enjoys feeding me chocolate. There will be times when she and I are working on something, or it'll be late but we're both there, and she'll pull out this tiny version of Mary Poppin's magic bag and just pull candy and chocolate out of it and give it to me.

Japan also has amazingly tasty snacks. Potato sticks that are kind of like baked crunchy french fries. Bacon flavored, cheese flavored, curry flavored, butter flavored, pasta flavored (they're super good!); they pretty much have my name written all over them. And the bread. Oh the bread. Don't get me started. There's this one bakery that's in Okayama City (thankfully, far away) that has not only focaccia bread, but CHEESE focaccia. CHEESE BREAD. OH MY WORD. Good bye money. Hello weight gain.
In addition to savories, Japan is also really good at doing sweet things. Oh the candy aisle... I've actually gotten better at walking down it without acquiring any new purchases, but sometimes I really want to run down that aisle screaming because the temptation is so great. Especially with these choco pie things. They're bite sized, made with that pastry dough, with chocolate inside. HEAVEN.

Japan also likes to seasonalize its food and candies. So these pies... were cappuccino flavored in the winter, strawberry flavored when that was in season, and I've found them in green tea flavor. Delicious.

This seasonalization of foods, along with the regionalization of foods, has led to many many flavors of things being available only in the places when you travel to them. Japan is OBSESSED with that. Local cuisine. Kitkats are perhaps the most abundant and famous example of this (that I know of anyways).

So you have your basic KitKat bar, right? Take the specialties of a region, and make it that flavor. Sell it only in that area (and some neighboring areas, maybe). I'm surprised I haven't seen a peach flavored kitkat, but you can buy orange flavored in Shikoku (they're famous for citrus), pudding flavor in Kobe (KOBE PUDDING~), green tea and hojicha tea flavor in Kyoto (oldschool j-culture icons) and I forget what else. Pear from somewhere. Wasabi KitKats (not as wasabi-like as you'd think; it's actually sweet).

A couple of people I know (past and present) have done/are doing the KitKat challenge. It's kind of amusing, but it means that I get to try new KitKat flavors as well since generally, people will bring it back as group omiyage.

This (and the whole, I don't want to go outside because it's so damn hot/cold/rainy depending on the season) are the reasons behind me gaining weight in Japan. I'm sure of it.

DAMN YOU TASTY CANDIES AND SNACKS. DAMN YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU.

MAME SHIBA~

ね、知ってる？ 「Ne, shitteru?」

I don't know what the time difference is between here and PST. I cheat. I have a clock on my dashboard that I click and it tells me the magical time.

A hippo's sweat is pink.

You should watch the mameshiba videos on youtube. I forget what they're up to - like 18 at least or something?

In Japanese, mame （豆）means bean. ...beyond that I don't actually know what it means. But these videos are basically "once a day facts" videos (kinda, since they're not really once a day) but they're really cute different beans with faces on them. Though really, by "beans" they mean "round vaguely shaped bean things" including chili beans, jelly beans, green peas... Yay for random trivia~!

You can buy keychains and stuff over here of them. Also kanji books and phrase books and bento boxes and what have you.

Surprisingly though, only one of my teachers has known about it when I've told them.

Oh, apparently the website says that they're bean-dog hybrids.

豆しば〜

This is what I do at 1 am when I don't want to go to bed. I think I might have abused my powers of the drink bar at Coco's and drank way too much coffee. That is to say, a cup of coffee.

Oh, I don't think I've mentioned drink bars. THey're kind of awesome. Moreso than American ones anyways. What do we even call them in English? Do we also call them drink bars? All I can think of right now is that at Sweet Tomato's/Souplantation (I actually forgot the name and had to google that just now) has pretty much the same thing, where you have to buy a drink (unless you want water) and then you get unlimited refills. For some reason, I never made that kind of connection to the ones back home (until literally right now). Perhaps it's because you only really see those kind of all-you-can-drink bars at family restaurants or Jolly Pasta or other chain places? Nomihodai all-you-can-drink alcoholic beverages are a different beast all together. They generally make you order your drinks for that though.

Drinks in Japan in Okayama anyways, unless you're at a family restaurant or fast food place or eating a set meal, are ridiculously expensive. Like today, at the place where I had lunch, a soda was 500 yen ($5+). I was like "HOLY CRACKERJACKS" and ordered a nice coffee instead.

The one at Coco's is called the *premium* drink bar. It has loose leaf tea with little tea pots and at least three different machines that dispense some form of tasty coffee/tea and another for soda and another for iced tea/coffee. I guess the loose leaf makes it premium? They have pu-er tea! And pineapple tea! And baked Apple tea~ <3

GRE

I have put off taking this stupid test for long enough.

I am going to sign up for it tomorrow, to take it this weekend. I don't feel prepared at all, but I need to take it otherwise I'll start to forget what I had to re-learn. I meant to take this in March/April; it's already passed the halfway mark in May! AIYAH.

I guess I'll make a weekend out of it or something. Thankfully, I don't have classes this week, so it's cram cram cram time for me!

Studying + Jessica = naptime

Rain rain go away before I have to go to work tomorrow~

For some reason I have a hard time studying when I'm even just the tiniest bit tired. I tend to fall asleep.

This of course, is something of a problem on its own, but it's an even bigger problem when I'm studying in the staff room. I don't really want to fall asleep in front of all the teachers. I did for a little bit today. >_>;

Classes had been cancelled today due to the heavy rain warnings for our prefecture. Never have I seen classes cancelled due to rain, but apparently flooding is a problem out here. So I had lots of time to study instead. And inevitably, the sleepiness set in after a couple of problems.

Instead though, of continuing downstairs, I grabbed a kanji book or two and trekked off to the library. Hey, I figured, if I fall asleep anywhere I might as well fall asleep somewhere where there aren't teachers and there aren't really people.

Worked like a charm. Got some studying in as well as a nice short nap for a bit, and then a couple minutes after I woke up, one of the office ladies (who I'm guessing is friends with the library lady) brought over a cup of tea and a snacky thing that was this kind of... round... pancake-y thing with whipped cream and anko inside. Very tasty. I was super touched and it made me happy and motivated to study more.

"Shhh," they told me as they put the cup and snack down on the table next to me. "Secret."

THEY'RE SO NICEEEEEEEEEE~ <3 I want to bring them omiyage now haha. And study more in the library. Seriously though, I was like "awww" X3 Cause the library lady is nice anyways; she helped me check out books from the prefectural libary.

Japanese CMs

So commercials, or CMs as they're called in Japan, are pretty... interesting in Japan. Most of them, on the interesting scale, I would put up there with superbowl commercials. Some of them you're just kind of, wtf?

However, recently, due to the earthquake, many companies have actually pulled their advertisements because they don't want to be running them in the midst of a national crisis. I don't blame them. This means that there is pretty much only one company that's been running commercials - AC Japan, or Advertising Council Japan. They do things like public service announcements on tv. Breast exams, cancer screenings, so on.

At the end of every commercial they have this little jingle that, due to the fact that ALL the commercials are AC commercials and that there's a LOT of them, pretty much everyone who has even looked at a TV this past month knows it. They've also been running this あいさつ (aisatsu) greeting commercial for kids that basically teaches you the different phrases to say like "itadakimasu" or "ohayo" and combines them with animals.

You can watch that video here.

Since practically everyone knows this commercial, if you make a reference to it, there's a 98% chance that people have heard of it. This can lead to some pretty awesome things, especially if you have a super genki class full of boys who like to speak (even if it's not in English).

In my technical high school, we have a listening exercise at the beginning with this multiple choice section where they have to listen to the tape and circle the correct word and the correct meaning to match the word (it also uses, I swear, the cheesiest background music ever, and part of me dies a little every time I have to hear it, which is four times a day). Naturally, some of these answer combinations include A. Some include C. Some, though a little rarer, happen to be A and C.

So what did the super genki/energetic/talkative boys in my electricity class do?

We have the students volunteer to read out the questions and stuff, so they raised their hands and shouted quite energetically for us to pick them. Unwittingly, this past monday, we chose one of the kids thinking "isn't this great that they're volunteering?"

Little did we know how great it was going to be.

They *sang* the answer (AC) in the form of the AC jingle. So. Effin'. Hilarious. We had to stop for a minute or two because everyone was laughing so hard, us teachers included. Seriously, I think that's been a highlight of my teaching so far. The second most amusing time was probably today, when we played the Telephone game and instead of "I like to eat red fish with rice for lunch" one row answered "I like to eat red fish and Jeshika" for lunch.

I corrected them on my name and we told them what they had actually said in Japanese. Hilariousness. I felt kind of bad for laughing, but only a little.

Some spoofs off the AC commercials are pretty awesome too. So while the song is incredibly annoying since it gets stuck in my head (constantly) and I can now sing the entire jingle,some of the side products have been quite amusing.

On a more boring note, it's raining, but supposedly, rainy season hasn't actually started yet; this is just the rain from some typhoon somewhere. Le sigh. I don't mind the rain as long as I don't have anywhere I have to go, but oh god, the humidity.

I can't wait until summer. Not.

Crap, I totally have the AC aisatsu song stuck in my head now. And whose fault was that?

Golden Week

So here in Japan, there's this thing called Golden Week when a couple of holidays fall really close together and pretty much all of Japan decides to travel at the same time. This year, it started on April 29th (Friday), and we had the 3rd-5th of May off in addition to that Friday.

This meant that technically, we all had work on Monday and Friday.

What the heeeeeeeeeeeeeeck Japan.

Lots of people took those two days off and went places, but my original plans - volunteering up in Tohoku - fell through because they actually had a huge amount of people who wanted to volunteer and our logistics were giving us a little bit of a problem. Plus none of us had camping gear (cause seriously, who brings that with them over here at first? I mean, I haven't been like, CAMPING camping either like... ever.) and because (more importantly perhaps) none of us had cars. Transporting tents, sleeping bags, food, water, and clothing (the basics) was proving to be difficult, especially since I don't have one of those backpacking/hiking backpacks.

So instead, I had a pretty chill Golden Week. Didn't travel anywhere, unless in to Okayama counts. Mostly, I did UFO machines, karaoke, and hung out with friends. We watched j-dramas (YEAH MEI-CHAN NO SHITSUJI~) together, what few of us were left, ate out together, spent the night at friend's places, ate taco salad (YEA-YUUUUUUUH), improved on said taco salad during round 2 (different day, but I decided to buy a cheap hamburger steak that was mostly hamburger and added that to the taco salad to make it Really Freaking Awesome), had lots of quesadillas (for Cinco de Mayo) and spent (or wasted, depending on how you look at it) a lot of money on UFO claw machines (I even won things though), racing games (woo I have an Initial D card and Mario Kart Card now), and pelicula. Oh man. I love photo booths over here. They're SO MUCH FUN. X3 And they're cheap too.

Though, while we were in Joypolis, the huge Sega arcade in Okayama, we came to the realization that the silver coins we were putting into the machines were not quarters, actually, but they were 100 yen coins, which was like sticking a dollar coin into a machine each time. And to think that I used to believe 75 cents for a game was expensive. Ha. Ha ha ha.

I did, however, get out of the local area for a couple days. On tuesday, a bunch of other ALTs and I went to a beach on this island close by called Shiraishi and camped out, drank, and generally relaxed. Met some pretty chill people. Oh, I got to kayak too! I got this amazingly painful sunburn from that. My shoulders hurt so much right now. No joke. They hurt way more a couple days ago; wearing clothing was physically painful and very very uncomfortable, but now it's just kind of itchy. Sigh. Not looking forward to that part of being sunburnt. I have nobody to blame but myself though, as I stupidly did not put on sunblock.

Kayaking made me remember how much I miss kayaking as a form of workout. We kayaked to a nearby island and wooow my arms hurt so much after. The water was gorgeous though. I wanted to go for a swim but I kept seeing small jellyfish floating in the water and thought that those were best avoided. On the island too, while everyone went on a short hike around the island, I went over and talked to this Japanese family from Okayama city who were fishing off the rocks. They were super nice. I learned a couple of words too - あさい　ふくい which mean shallow and deep haha. Also the names of fish. This one fish they had caught was called kisu (which sounded like kiss to me). It was really nice to just relax and casually talk to them in broken English/Japanese. :D Makes me motivated to continue my studies in Japanese more! (Speaking of, I did buy a couple of books for studying Japanese for the JLPT - the Japanese language proficiency test - we'll see how that goes)

Stupid me though, I have no pictures from this holiday excursion. Sigh. I need to get better at that, especially since I saw this really cool looking starfish that was black with a splash of red at the center. It was so cool! X3 There were also a bunch of sea anemones, a couple sea urchins, and even a couple fish that we saw while over there. We managed to get low tide and walked out to the little island. It was super awesome. X3 I totally want to go again. The people on the island are really friendly, and there are two foreigners who own this bar on the beach called Moo Bar (it's cow themed!) and they're super chill and really nice. :D The drinks are tasty too, but man, I've gotten really bad at remembering to drink water/non-alcoholic liquids when I drink here. >_< Working on that though.

Yeah though, today was nice. Yesterday I went into Okayama City (again) and spent the night at Jessi's place (again). We went to Joypolis (I sank 1,000 yen into a pokemon UFO claw machine trying to get audino/tabunne but ended up winning two other pokemon, one which I gave to Jessi cause I'm not a bug type fan and the other to Gemma since she asked). So I suppose it's not that bad? >_> I made up for it by buying books to study with. Sigh.

It's finally starting to get warmer though, so I'm kind of like uuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh spring is rapidly turning into summer where it's muggy and I want to just live in water. >_<

I am totally not a warm weather person.

I am also totally not a bug person.

It's getting muggy and hot. It's supposed to be up in the 80s.

Warm weather basically means that the bugs return. I've already heard the cicadas, gotten smacked in the face/cheeks/eye by at least five bugs on the ride back home, found two spiders in my house and one giant moth on my bike basket, and my continuous war with the small spiders over the handlebars of my bike has begun anew. Sigh.

Hooray for spring indeed.

Let's NIHONGO~

Yuzu

I'm not entirely sure if it's a seasonal food or not, but yuzu is one of the interesting flavors that I've seen used in a wide range of cooking in Japan.

Yuzu is a type of (usually) yellow citrus that kind of looks like a really bumpy, kinda yellow orange. You know, those really rough looking oranges. Or like someone took an orange and a lemon and BAMP made a yuzu. It's taste though... is different than both and not really similar to either. It's distinct to the point where if you eat something with yuzu flavoring, you're like, woah, that's yuzu there. No doubt 'bout it. It's a really popular flavor to use in things or to add as a zest like a lemon. For example, I'm eating this fantastic yuzu yakisoba, and I also bought yuzu gyoza (which, might I add, is fantastic). I've also seen it in honey, tea, and a slew of other things as well. Apparently, it's an important ingredient in ponzu.

It's not as sweet as an orange, but it's not as sour as a lemon. It still has that kind of citrusy zing to it though, and tastes... fresh. It's hard to describe! You should just eat it for yourself.

Truly though, it's one of my favorite flavors in Japan. Whether or not it's a seasonal thing, well, I guess I'll see in summer if it disappears or not, but I'm hoping it sticks around. It's also funny, because I haven't actually seen the fruit around in stores; only in the form of flavored things. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a kind of southern Japan thing, but apparently it's more widespread than that?

Either way, it's super とても oishii~ <3