One of the big news items the last couple of days has been about a butter shortage in Japan.  It seems like a really trivial story.  I mean, really.  Not enough butter to go around?  But the cost of butter is not only on the rise in Japan, there is often a shortage of stock.  Want to buy some butter?  You're lucky if the store still has some and some stores limit what they have to one per customer. But what separates this story from the silly section are three ...

It's a revelation!  I never knew until three days ago that tonic water is sweet!  This explains the extra tasty vodka tonic I had when I was at an extremely interesting photography exhibition in a tiny, tiny izakaya in the Golden Gai area of Shinjuku.  At first, I thought it was the ambience adding to the flavor.   Golden Gai is a small maze of tiny izakayas (Japanese drinking bars) that are about as large as the average second bedroom of a typical apartment rented in Manh...

I just got back from a week-long trip to Prague with my husband.  We took the trip to celebrate our tenth anniversary.  I'm pretty happy that we've made it to ten, and we spent a long time debating about wether we should go or not. We booked our tickets and thought we were safely ready.  No such luck.  One day during house cleaning, I decide to check our passports to double check that our passport expiry dates are no problem.  Lucky I did.  My husband's passport ...

My husband and his buddies have played in a soccer tournament in Phuket, Thailand for the last couple of years. It is a 7's tournament (7 a side, and 7 minute halfs). I go along because, hey, I want my beach time, too! Usually, I just go to the beach or hang by the pool and this is the first year I actually watched them play. I video taped the games. Considering I didn't have a tripod, the filming wasn't too bad. I tried making a video from other years but I never got a result I liked...

Loca responded to my blog about cheesy songs and she mentioned a cheese form I haven't thought of in a long time Link --the party cheese ball. My mom has the best recipe for cheeseballs ever. I think it's from the Best of Bridge cookbook but I'm not sure. Mom's cheeseball is home made and covered in crushed walnuts. It is cheesy, creamy, spicy and spreadable on a cracker. I fell in cheesy love at first bite. When I moved to Vancouver to go to university I would get a craving for some...

I was goofing around and came across this music blog that listed the ultimate romantic frommage. Link I'm not a big fan of really romantic songs, especially high fat content romantic pop. Who am I kidding. When I hear that stuff I start thinking that I need an insulin shot. But, I had a good laugh reading the list of songs and mostly snickering at the memories I have associated with some of the songs. Dolly Parton's "Islands in the Stream" made the list. I don't have any romantic con...

On Saturday, Sunday (Feb 10), looked to be cold snowy and chilly. I had a mission-- I was going to try out a new camera (Mamiya 6) and take some photos of plum blossoms in the snow. The day itself started out with snow but it was warm and sunny and by noon the snow was a distant memory except in dark, shadowy places. A late start meant that any hope of snowy blossoms had already melted away. Then I realized that in order to take the picture I visualized I needed a macro lens and I didn...

Your Score : War Mage You scored 7 Combat, 4 Social, 8 Strategy and 7 Magic! Direct combat, Loner, Brute, Magic. You're the War Mage. Armed with swords, chain mail, AND fire bolts, you have an arsenal at your disposal. You don't need much help when you're so versatile and quite straightforward on the battlefield. What more can be said? You've got it all except for people on your squad, but they'd just hold you back anyways. ...

There is another woman who has the same name as me. She is an academic, who interesting enough, writes papers about being Japanese American or mixed marriages or something. In a weird way, there are some superficial parallels to our lives. Kind of strange for someone whom I have never met. Today, I think I got an email that was meant for her. I replied to the email letting the person know the wrong recipient had gotten the mail. It wasn't a juicy, gossipy mail. I don't know if I'm ...

There are certain things that I am embarrassed to find funny. Things that I generally don't tell people. I'm a semi-closet goofball. When people first meet me the assume that I'm quiet, easy going and laid back. Then they get to know me. Or rather, I get to know them well enough to find out if I can turn off the little editor. Here is the list of things I'm embarrassed to find funny: 1. The time my mom stood on a chair with wheels to check the gas meter, fell down the front of the...

Last night there was an end of the year special on TV in Japan on TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Service?). It was Bingo! You could play along by going to the internet on the phone (I think you had to use Softbank as a provider), go to the menu list, select TBS and register for the bingo. After you registered, you got a card and as the balls came out, you blackened the numbers. Each time you got a number, it sent a signal out and registered if you had bingo or not. A lottery was done from the...

I'm a night owl. I just noticed that it is 3:30 in the morning and I had intended to get to sleep before midnight since I have a lot to do tomorrow. Part of the night owl situation is due to holiday time-warp. Things just don't seem to keep on track during the holidays. Another part is that I just got a new Mac and I'm trying to figure things out, try some new software and figure out how to get that disk out that got stuck. I figured it out and it was common sense (reboot) but I'm not ...

It's nice to finally see a movie where the trailers are intruiging but don't end up being the best part of the film. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the movie because the trailers I saw were a bit coy about the reason for this apocalyptic world presented in the movie. A little googling and checking out some movie reviews and the discovery that it was due to a virus made this movie a must-see for me. I have long been a fan of plots where viruses have or will potentially end civil...

I know that there is some adage that any commercial that sticks in your mind is a good commercial. Sticky is good. Or is it? Lately, some sticky commercials have stuck in my mind only to remind me that I'm not going to buy them. There is a product called Watering Gum in Japan. I suppose it is suppose to generate a lot of saliva. Being a native English speaker, I think that the product name hits me the wrong way from the start. But the nail in the coffin for this product was a commerc...