Goodbye Garden

I had a tiny kitchen garden here this summer that did pretty well.  I kept us in tomatos, oregano and basil.  Also a little parsley, but apparently Japanese caterpillars like parsley so what little bit I managed to keep was always appetizingly surrounded by squashed caterpillars.  It was pretty easy to find seedlings here at the various big-box stores, although there wasn't quite the variety to which I'm accustomed.  There are lots of seeds available but I'm too lazy (or not bored enough yet) to start them indoors.  I didn't see too many of my neighbors growing tomatos....eggplant is really popular though.

I'll be taking it down in next week though, it's gettin' cold and looking pretty sad. 

back in it's heyday

where it ended up
(brushetta + salad = dinner )

More on the local rice crop: Our teacher told me that it is customary for restaurants to put out signs that say "We have new rice!".  Apparently freshly harvested rice is the most delicious.  However, because of lingering radiation concerns, the going joke in these parts is that the signs are now going to say "We have old rice!".  Ha!

Check back next week, we have an adventure planned for this weekend!

Fun with Adjectives & Idioms

I love learning Japanese idioms.  And I am good at remembering the words for various adjectives.  So when they are combined it makes for a fun class.

To indicate that someone can't keep a secret you say they have a "light mouth". 

To indicate that someone can keep a secret or doesn't talk much, you say they have a "heavy mouth".

To indicate that someone is lazy you say they have "heavy hips".

And to indicate that a woman is, <ahem> ...."easy", you say she has "light hips".

Corporate Shill

Those of you who also use Blogger know that it gives you the option to "monetize" your blog.  For those of you who don't, it seems to be a fairly easy process by which you sign up to have ads placed on your blog and then depending on the volume of your traffic you will receive money.  I've investigated it a little bit and determined that I don't have or want (although I appreciate each and every one of you reading this) enough traffic to make it worthwhile.  But I am forever curious as to what kind of ads would be placed on my blog.  See, it uses "GooglePrescientRobotSense"  to determine--based on the content of your blog--what ads to place on it.  I have a bad feeling that I would end up with Japanese p--0--r--N (see me try to trick the robot there?) plastered all over the place. 

However, if I were able to choose my own ads I would be all for it, money or no.  I would restrict myself to only American companies who will ship stuff to me in Japan.  I like to shop, and I have my stores to which I am loyal.  But if I find that they won't ship stuff to me here, well, sayonara.  Those who do, will have their praises sung: Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Modcloth are among them.  They may charge a little for the shipping but it's still less that if I had it mailed to someone in the US and then they shipped it to me (which can cost a fortune).

But the reason for this post is that I just found the best of them all....and it is not at all who I expected it to be.  I need some winter pajamas so I went to the American Eagle Outfitters website fully expecting to cross them off the list.  You should know that when I am on the Internet under our Japanese IP address (we have an American one through VPN too) most websites recognize that I am in Japan.  And some of them have pop-ups in Japanese and a rare few ask me to clarify exactly how I would like to see their website.  But this is the only one I have seen that recognizes that I may live in Japan, but read English, and want to see prices in dollars (or pesos for that matter).  Now if only they had long pajama pants for sale.....

that is some sharp programming right there

Oh, and I'm not going to say which companies won't ship to me (I've already probably got Google after me now) but let's just say that you shouldn't put the words "imports" or "world" in your name if you don't ship internationally.