a post-blog
I got back in town yesterday, after a weekend of eating Grillades & Grits and passively aiding the American assault on all unique global cultures. A day at the beach + a sunscreen mishap = red, red shoulders which prevented me from going into the local tattoo parlor and getting those full-ink sleeves like the dude from RATM.
Japan is so "in" in America that my local Albertson's sells Golden Curry.
Also, Scooby-Doo Sudoku? The sudoku whirlwind is still blowing strong - so strong, in fact, that the trend seems to have returned from the dead here in Japan. What I don't quite understand, however, is how they can still be popular when anyone who has done a year or so of sudoku, making their way up to the Ultra Ridiculous class of puzzles, will know that the puzzles do not get more fun or more "challenging" - they just require more and more busywork and a serious attention to detail. You do little more than block off boxes with only two options for an hour and then finally stumble upon the one square that will set off the entire grid like a mousetrap. Most of your time is spent in the erasing process. And yet, Americans love this new sexy brand of deductive reasoning. A better blogger would tie this trend into the Iraq War.
TEPCO came to my new apartment this morning and installed the Internet, so hopefully this will bolster my blogging in the coming weeks. Lately, I have had to leave work and check into an Net Cafe every ten minutes to read my comments and edit out the vowels.
Posted by marxy at June 22, 2006 2:35 PMDon't jump to any conclusions. As far as I can tell, the spread of Japanese curry mixes is due to demand by residents of the US from various East Asian countries where it's popular, such as Taiwan. Very few Americans even know there is such a thing as Japanese curry. The Pocky at the Hastings Books Music & Video here in Arkansas (where I'm visiting family) is an obvious appeal to casual japanophiles, but I don't think that group is buying curry at Albertson's yet.
Posted by: wintersweet at June 22, 2006 3:21 PMTangentially, I understand that a Scooby-Doo comic came out in which the Mystery Inc. crew unriddles a mystery relating to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. (It is happening this weekend btw.) That is the end of my story.
Posted by: Boyrand at June 22, 2006 4:52 PMWell, SF is certainly not the south, but all the convenience stores there have 10 or 15 japanese snack products.
in a separate story, if the "GI" 低GI means gastrointestinal tract, I really really don't want to anything to do with this or ian thorpe.
Posted by: nate at June 22, 2006 5:01 PMtepco fiber is great!
Posted by: Chris_B at June 23, 2006 12:58 AM"Well, SF is certainly not the south, but all the convenience stores there have 10 or 15 japanese snack products."
most places have the usual j-snacks like wasabi peas etc.
on another note, curry is the bees knees in Taiwan is true in fact the Japanese spicy curry with chicken (it's called Donkas in Korea and is considered "american food") at 7-11 is so popular it often sells out. It's been replaced by these weird "twisters" that are one 1/2 j-curry and 1/2 Taiwanese BBQ. I'm assuming the government is somehow involved in this crack down as they were with the importation of the "rice burger" to boost Taiwanese eating rice. MOS Burger seems to be enveloping McDonalds slowly but steadily here, although it's cheese burger is twice the cost of Micky D's.
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Koreans are buying all the curry found in Northern VA supermarkets, FWIW. They keep it next to Korean nori and Korean canned coffee - which is SHITTIER than the Japanese version, believe it or not.
Posted by: Adamu at June 23, 2006 9:50 AMHey Chris_B, is TEPCO good?
I've just used up my Yahoo BB two free months, so I think it's time to switch.
Are the prices pretty comparable?
Posted by: Rory P. Wavekrest at June 23, 2006 11:54 AMI'm pretty sure Ohio supermarkets have been carrying golden curry for a few years, but I could be wrong. Something more interesting is the local super wal-mart carrying chocolate and strawberry pocky, but no other grocery stores in this town have any kind of Japanese snack (other than wasabi peas and rice crackers.)
Posted by: David at June 23, 2006 1:29 PMpocky i believe is now domestic. as you can get it all over in nyc, for about 1$, and with no import sticker.
Posted by: trevor at June 23, 2006 2:19 PMAlso, I have to say that not only is Pocky no longer an import, it's probably here to for a least the next 5 years, when I predict the "Japan cachet" will have dissipated. But then, who knows? Whoever is making the stuff here will hopefully not abandon the obvious qualities of tasty cookie-sticks and perhaps start innovating with different incarnations and flavors.
Posted by: adamu at June 24, 2006 12:23 AMTEPCO beats the pants off any of the NTT services (dunno if yahoo is using NTT fiber or not) for two reasons:
1) its not a shared connection. The line runs from your place to their network center, NTT makes you share with 150 or so of your neighbors. Thus you get "more"
2) its "full duplex" meaning upload speed = download speed. Great if you run your own servers or *cough*P2P*cough* apps.
Any fiber beats DSL as long as the crows dont steal your fiber
Posted by: Chris_B at June 24, 2006 8:29 PMGreat, thanks for the info.
Posted by: Rory P. Wavekrest at June 28, 2006 6:46 PM