And Sometimes Why

Just in case you thought you ate a lot of rice, here’s a picture of the bag of rice we have in our apartment. It’s a 30 kg bag (66 lb).

Yuko’s parents buy a new one of these about every three months and split it with us. That means that Yuko and I eat about 11 kg (24 lb) of rice each month, and I eat far more of it than Yuko does (too many carbs…).

Good thing we both like genmai (unpolished brown rice).

Even Parmesan cheese needs a mascot and a cell phone strap in Japan.

Japanese burrito

You can’t really get Mexican food here, but these things are available in most grocery stores.

It’s basically a big fat sushi roll with sandwich-like innards (lettuce, chicken, egg, and some fixin’s in this case) that you eat like a burrito.

Pizza in Japan is served with Tabasco sauce (or packets of “hot green sauce,” like this one from Pizza Hut). This is unfortunate, as the crust of Japanese pizza is typically already saturated with oil. Also, crushed red pepper (my pizza condiment of choice) is unavailable here.

“Mottainai” in this context basically means “don’t be wasteful,” and there are directions on the outside of the cardboard box so you can fold it down to a manageable size to put out with your paper recycling.

Oh, and pizza is phenomenally expensive here. Medium pizzas start at about $12, and a large will set you back about $30.

Mario Kart figurines on display by the lunch counter at the ramen shop I used to go to across the street from ALS

This is something I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while. I see a lot of neat/weird/cool stuff on a pretty regular basis, but up to now, didn’t really have a good way of sharing it. I’ll probably post a lot of pictures with brief captions in this category.

So without further ado, here’s today’s Thing of the Day:

A portrait of me, done by one of my students. =)