And Sometimes Why

It’s not unusual for me to go a day or two without using “regular” utensils.

We were out shopping a couple days ago and Yuko asked me a question I never imagined I’d hear-
“Do you think we need another fork?”
-and it reminded me that until last weekend we had exactly one fork and exactly one (table) knife.

In our “silverware drawer,” there’s a section for cooking utensils (including two pairs of 30cm chopsticks and standard slotted spoons and whatnot), a section for chopsticks (filled to overflowing, in fact… just counted, eight pairs), and a section for miscellaneous utensils (including a couple muddlers, four full size spoons, a few dessert spoons and dessert forks, and the utensils you see pictured here).

Yesterday morning, my dog of 14 years finally succumbed to the lymphoma she’d been fighting for almost a year.

As Amanda said, it’s hard to believe we all watched her grow from a tiny little puppy to become an elegant old lady and pass away.

She came to Reno with me when I went to UNR and back to Vegas with me when I returned to UNLV. In 2000, she had a litter of eight puppies and was probably at least a grandmother by now.

Her last few years were spent with my mother while I’ve been here in Japan. Ellie enjoyed how busy my mom’s house is and all the people she got to meet while my mother taught music lessons.

She entertained younger siblings and parents alike, and she helped my mom’s house feel a little less empty after my brother and I both moved out of the country.

She will be sorely missed.

Here’s a video of me riding my bicycle to work. It’s really not all that exciting, but I wanted to try recording with my friend Tomas’s camera just for kicks. (If you’re interested, it’s the GoPro HD Hero2 with fisheye lens housing mounted loosely to my handlebars using an old flashlight mount.)

It’s “unlisted” on YouTube out of a vague sense of… not privacy concerns per se, but because I’d rather not have directions to my apartment searchable on YouTube, really.

Anyway, it’s only five minutes long, so even though the mount is pretty shaky, you can probably suffer through it.

I mentioned Sala Sol once before, but here’s an actual video I took inside the place a few weeks ago.

Between the reality of its small size and the lack of real options in this relatively small city, it’s regularly full to capacity. Sometimes I’m amazed the wait staff can still wade through the crowd.

Here’s my Thanksgiving day turkey dinner.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that turkey is an uncommon meat here in Japan, let alone whole turkeys. Whole birds are available from a select few mail-order importers, but they run close to $50 each. And that’s assuming you have someplace to cook the thing, as “full size” ovens are also rare.

With the double meat I got, this is easily the most turkey I could get in a reasonable meal.

Oh, also note the wet towelette (御絞り - おしぼり - oshibori) in the plastic wrapper. This is Japan, after all.

I present to you: a bag of glucose.

None of that mamby-pamby table sugar here, this is the pure stuff: bane of diabetics and enricher of their doctors, this is pure dextrose, or grape sugar as the bag says.

I found this in a regular supermarket, in the baking aisle as I recall. This 150g bag will set you back a little over $3.

Let’s make our own Pixy Stix!

Here’s another “Hey, that’s a good idea” moment.

Convenience stores in Japan often sell small buckets already filled with ice, as well as individual plastic cups filled with ice (including lids and straws, if you look carefully).

Have you ever seen a dessert sandwich?

Here’s a sandwich made of a cinnamon danish bun with fruit, chocolate, and whipped cream filling.

Call me crazy, but even if you love desserts made with fruit and cinnamon, when packaged like this these sandwiches do not look appealing in the least.

What do you do if you run a preschool and you want to take your charges out to the park?

Why, you pile them in one of these, of course.

Our school doesn’t use them because we don’t take kids to the park until they can walk properly on their own, but I seem to recall seeing them pretty full with about eight kids in there at a time.

If you look closely, you can see there are separate bicycle hand brakes for each of the large wheels on the sides, and the four small wheels are just swiveling casters.

It also looks like the center piece opposite the handles opens up to let kids in and out, but I’ve only seen kids lifted in and out, so I don’t know for sure.

I took these two pictures last week at the park near MSP, when another local preschool brought a large group of kids at the same time our bilingual classes were there.

I don’t really know for sure, but if I had to I’d guess that preschools in the US don’t take their kids off premesis at all. What do you think about these things?

Here’s a neat idea that may have you wondering why no one thought of it before: a small fire extinguisher in an aerosol can, for those small, not-yet-out-of-control fires.

Seriously, why did no one think of this before?