i'm lovin' it

I think if I hadn't seen Supersize Me, and Starbucks wasn't in our local shopping centre, I would probably live in our Macca's. Why? Well, anyone who knows me, knows how excited I get about trying new foods and new specials, so on top of the whole "yay it's some novel Japanese McDonald's" thing, they have new specials every single month. It reminds me of when Macca's used to have "Flavour of the Month" when I was in primary school, and it was tradition to go get Macca's every Tuesday after tennis practice. And yes, I was a little heavier back then.

Anyway, at the moment the specials are all chocolate involved:





(By the way, the chocolate sundae actually counts as a special here because normally they've only got mango or strawberry sundaes)

So yeah, I was a little vocal about expressing my excitement about new specials, but what really made me want to visit Macca's more was the reaction of the store people to seeing three foreigners entering a Macca's in the middle of nowhere. Like, the shopping centre was built where rice paddies used to be, middle of nowhere. Anyways, I loved how despite not understanding every single word of what they were saying, I totally got what they were talking about.

Clerk 1: Uh oh.
Clerk 2: Are you going to be okay, or do you want me to help you serve them?
Clerk 1: Um.... I've got it, I should be fine. There's an English menu somewhere, right?
Clerk 2: Uh, maybe, check the back side of the menu.

As we approach the counter after discussing loudly what we want to eat, the clerks smile at us, forgoing the usual Irasshaimase, thinking that we'll have no idea what they're talking about in Japanese. That is, until my Japanese-fluent friend (Like, ordering food on the phone and having the other person have no idea that she's not Japanese) starts ordering and asking them questions about today's menu, and the store people burst out laughing.

Clerk 1: Oh Thank God! I was so nervous! Your Japanese is so good!
Friend: Oh, I'm not that good yet, I just know how to order McDonald's in Japanese.
Clerk 1: Well, that's good enough for us!

If I wasn't so loyal to our friends at Starbucks (i.e. Smiley girl, guy who works at multiple Starbucks, The Newbies, and Glen) I so would start hanging out at Macca's more.

peace parks, omiyage and forts

I think I've just had two weekends in a row which pretty much represent the kinds of weekends I have here in Japan.

Two weeks ago, which was a long weekend here in Japan, me and a couple of other JETs went to Hiroshima - it felt like it had been ages since we had done some hardcore travelling outside our prefecture, so we were all excited - to top the whole experience off, we found our favourite hotel chain - Super Hotel had a hotel in Hiroshima as well, and best of all, it only opened just the week before we arrived! Yay Brand new hotels!


I should take this moment while you're probably scratching your head to explain our obsession with what seems like a regular hotel chain. After spending a fair number of nights in Japanese style cheap-ass accomodation, which has a shared bathroom for everyone, shared showers, and a room literally the size of a single bed (I could actually touch all four walls with my head, toes, and hands), Super Hotel is like a Godesend - for what works out to be around $35 per person per night (if there's 3 or 4 of you) you can get a double sized bed, bunk bed, and an extra single bed with your own bathroom and free all you can eat breakfast, all for the same price as a claustrophobic bathroomless room in Tokyo. So that's why the thought of a cheap hotel caused everyone to strike weird, random poses in front of it.

So Hiroshima, was really awesome, and really intense - On Saturday, we went to the Peace Museum with a couple hours before closing time to go, thinking that 2 hours were enough to see everything. After the 30 minutes before closing chime went, I got to the end of the first building, which had explained the history of Hiroshima before the bomb, and the history of bombs in the world.

I was a little disappointed when I hit the gift shop that It only focused on the history of the bomb rather than what happened in the blasts, until I actually got to the Main Building, which confronts you straight away with photos of the bomb blast, and a section with mannequins depicting what people would have looked like right after the bomb blast - with the charred skin hanging of people's arms and little kids crying and everything. Like, seriously, intense. It has bits of clothing, skin and hair of people and heaps of personal accounts about the bomb. We ended up revisiting the museum the day before we left so we could take our time in the Main building and see everything we wanted too, and then took another couple of hours to recover from seeing all that stuff.

But the weekend again concluded how it normally does with our trips - Firstly, our need to conform to Japanese traditions as much as we can, as well as our need to be liked by our other teachers means we spend around $35 on souvenirs/food to give to our teachers when we get back. It's something that we always buy, but always forget to factor into our budgets. Then, after buying our omiyage, we make our way back to Gifu, always thinking we've planned enough time to get back, but still finding ourselves arrive at home sometime in the evening, buggered, tired, and not wanting to travel for a while.

And so, it leads us to the other side of the weekend spectrum, such as this weekend. It involves a near-daily visit to Starbucks - not because we're obsessed (because seriously, we're not, we just happen to be at Starbucks on the days they change their seasonal menu) but mainly because there's not much else to do around here, other than buy other unnecessary stuff in the shopping centre. That is, other than building a fort.

It's not a fort per se, mainly, just a sheet that's draped down over the door frame, so that the sliding door can stay open for us to watch TV, but at the same time, minimising the amount of heat that escapes my poorly-insulated bedroom. Seeing how it's probably only 9 or 10 degrees in my house at the moment, I'm sure you can understand how extreme circumstances call for extreme fort-building.

Just for the record, we're not complete losers - fort-building only takes up so much of the weekend, the rest of it's filled with eating crap, thinking about coffee, and if we're really feeling ambituous, making scones and practising our British accents.

umm... mmm?

You know what this is?

It's fugu, which any old-school Simpsons fan will tell you is blowfish, the same kind that is poisonous if not prepared correctly, and forces a poorly-animated Homer to do everything he wants to do in life in what he believes to be the last 24 hours of his life.

While I have a penchant for trying many weird foods, I would've thought I'd need to psych myself up for my first fugu experience. I was expected of making it a huge event eating fugu, planning it for weeks to find the perfect restaurant that specialises in fugu and spending an exorbitant amount on trying this weird food.

But I didn't expect it to be served in a set course meal I was having with my dad in Tokyo. It was kinda anti-climactic actually, considering it was just plonked right in front of us and told it was fugu. But hey, I shouldn't really complain considering I got to try fugu!

So was it everything I ever dreamed of and more? Well, it was kinda meh, actually. The fish was cut really thinly, and doesn't have much of a flavour or unique texture to it. Plus, it's served with citrusy-yuzu soy sauce that you're supposed to dip it in, which pretty much is the only thing you tasted when you eat it.

And, I had heard that when fugu's done right, the licensed fugu chefs leave the tiniest trace of venom on the fish you're eating, so it makes your mouth tingle a little bit. Which, if that actually happened to me, would've been cool, but I'm still unsure if it was a placebo effect and I just thought it felt a little tingly. Meh Ah well, at least I've got another food I can say that I've eaten...

wooo! snowboarding! and nothing to show of it!

I had a fairly specific picture in mind when I thought about what my very first snowboarding experience would be like. It involved me, sitting atop a slope, looking down, with my snowboard firmly attached to my feet. As I start going down the slopes, carving like a pro, there'd be music playing in the background - more specifically, N*E*R*D's Rockstar (Jason Nevin's Remix), slowly building up in volume as I gain speed down the slope.

And yes, my perception of snowboarding may have been somewhat influenced by years of playing SSX, but not completely - It's not like I was expecting to do a 540 backside tailgrab over a huge gap or anything, I just has the more realistic expectation of being able to go down a slope with some music in the background. And yes, it may have raised the bar a little too high, considering it was my first time seeing actual snow, let alone first time snowboarding.

So that's why, when I was packing stuff to take to the ski place, I put my iPod in my pocket rather than my trusty digital camera. I was kinda afraid to take too much stuff to the snow in case I lost stuff or broke stuff while tumbing down the slopes in a huge, comically-sized snowball, picking up speed and other unwary snowboarders/skiiers that couldn't move out of the snowball's way. Again, why I took my fancy new iPod instead of my older and less expensive digital camera that can also be easily replaced in Japan, is beyond me.

So, while I wait for my friends to post some photos of me on the slopes onto facebook, I've only got this one photo of me in "action" (I use that term liberally).




*UPDATE*
Thanks to the beauty of facebook (and a friend who was actually smart enough to take a camera), I now have another photo of me snowboarding! that's right! TWO photos!