foreigners like you

Sorry for the silence! I've been hanging out on the couch, going to brunch, taking walks among the pine trees, listening to the geese everywhere, and chilling with the beagles.

My uncle just posted this picture of my grandpa with my mom and her siblings, I love it. It was taken in Buenos Aires when they were stationed there.

niaow niaow

Here's another offering over at CNNGo - this time about cat cafés, which I wrote about here. Thank to Jen and Beth and N for going with me for "research"!

And my flickr friend Takashi, a sometimes cat café-goer and cat photographer, gave me a quote but it came too late for me to be able to include it. He says about cat cafés:

"Why do I go to the nekocafe is...
Everycat has his own interests and personality.
I look forward to seeing them grow.Sometimes take a shot of them.
The place that is easy to make a chat with other customers and clerk.
They have in common-cat lovers.
I do not drink and smoking but I think they(cats) are attractive hostess."

ice is nice

I've certainly mentioned ice skating before. But this time it's a round-up of Tokyo rinks for this season over at CNNGo.

veggie japan hacks #2: curry (カレ)

Seijo Ishii makes a brand of vegetarian curry roux for Japanese style curry (it says on their site as well as in the store that it's suitable for vegetarians). It's one of the only ones I've found in Japan that does this - all the other ones have meat in them.

The packet looks like this. 

 S&B also makes one in a cool red tin that seems to be safe. It expressly states that it doesn't use beef, and I can't find anything in the ingredient list that says that it uses any meat.

It's the curry mix, not the curry powder.

I'd love to figure out how to make kare from scratch. Does anyone have a good recipe? I can do Indian masalas a bit but sometimes you just want Japanese-style curry.

the rest of the summer

In September I had a houseful of visitors from Germany staying with me for three weeks. We were lucky to get an extension on summer while it was already getting frigid over on their continent, and we spent most of the time in tshirts and shorts, fighting off mosquitoes.

We puri-kura'd and got creepy alien eyeballs.

We went to Minato Mirai and rode the rides.

We went to Kamakura and the Daibutsu and the beach and found some truly heinous sea life that Anne happily picked up and prodded. She's a rock. I shuddered.

Lena had her first go at an ocean. And everyone knows, the best way to be in the ocean is in your birthday suit. Here's a tip: if you want people to stare and exclaim EVEN MORE than they usually do, unleash a naked blonde baby on them. I swear we turned hundreds, if not thousands, of heads in unapologetic fascination with this little one. She fell in the fountain in Yokohama, okay? That's why this sprite was tearing around Sakuragicho in her nethers.

And we went to Kodomonokuni, twice, which is majorly fun for kids and pretty cool for adults too. It's totally okay to go swimming in the fountain there, and nobody will even stare at you.

But you might want to bring some extra butt padding if you brave the 110 meter long roller slide. Just saying. I'll spare you more details about the road rash on my backside.

She didn't seem to mind, though.

Happy Thanksgiving you guys.

this is really cramping my style

I went to the post office to mail a big package, a birthday present to my mom... only to find that, as of November 17th, we are no longer allowed to ship packages heavier than 453 grams (16 oz.) to the U.S. Wha?

The clerk couldn't tell me how long this would continue, but I suspect that it's connected to the recently rigidified airport regulations, what with their full body scans and strip searches. That place is moving more and more into a police state. I really really hope that it's temporary and we aren't just getting mired further and further into the muck.

The ability to write - a root of democracy

I love love love sending parcels and packages and the post office is a regular stop. I guess I'll have to bust out my digital scale and learn the art of small post... but this is a serious bummer.

What speaks like post? Emails are nice, but there's nothing like getting a letter or a parcel. These stamps are just a few from my grandma's extensive and scattered collection. It seems like she kept every letter or postcard she ever received. I'm like that too.

*ヒョウ柄

Learned some new vocabulary that really enriches my life: hyou-gara.

Leopard print. How did I go this long without knowing how to say this?

pretty boys selling mascara

Surely you've noticed this. There are a whole lotta mascara ads out there... featuring pretty femme boys NOT noticeably wearing mascara. Proof:

and

and let's not forget

and last but not least, (*edit) Jun Matsumoto:

What do you think is the reasoning behind this advertising? 

If you wear lots of mascara, you will date a boy like this?

Embrace your inner tranny?

These boys are prettier than you without makeup?

Help.