HEY DUDES
Halloween is a day for candy. This is why a good candyblog would come in handy on a day such as Halloween. Unfortunately, all you get is this.
BEST HARD CANDY EVER. The fam used to get this back in Hong Kong, and I think I might have found it once in America, but it's been a super long time since I've had it. If you haven't guessed yet, it is a SOUR candy. I remember it being OH SO sour, but I guess my tongue broke or something because now it's just kinda sour, but still delish.
Also, they are nice enough to give you instructions on how to eat the candy, created by Roy Lichtenstein. TRUE STORY: once in middle school I commented on Ry's Roy Lichtenstein shirt and he didn't believe that I knew who he was. I tried to tell him that I took a modern art history class but he mumbled something about Wagner and turned away.
This stuff is so good. I'm not quite sure what the name is, but the description in the brown oval says that it's "chocolate pie". It's not really anything close to pie, but it's still fantastic. It's like a flaky cracker thing that's injected with chocolate and given a toasty top.
I'm pretty sure Dars isn't Japanese at all, but I've never had it anywhere else, so it goes on the blog. I expected Dars to be something pretty rad and have plenty of tasties inside, but it just turned out to be a bunch of small milk chocolate bars. At first I was all LAAAAAAAAAAAME but it turns out that it's actually really good tasting chocolate. Sort of like Ghana, only better. Also, the pink dot up on the flap is probably one of the raddest and most useful things I've ever seen on a chocolate box. The three colors show what temperature the chocolate is at, so you can tell if it's been melted, frozen, or if it's just at the perfect temperature.
ALSO
Remember that Maccha stuff I was talking about? Well I also had some Maccha Kit Kats which were pretty tasty, but I have yet to find it again. Just imagine some Kit Kats that are green. And taste like delicious green tea. FANTASTIC.
I know that many of you are going to be doing things tonight to celebrate Halloween, but I want all of you to be safe. Seeing as every other place on the internet is giving out safety tips for tonight's festivities, I figure I will as well.
First of all, if you see a baby DO NOT GIVE IT ALCOHOL. I'm not entirely sure about what will happen, and that can only mean that HORRIBLE things will happen. 
Secondly, if you happen to be handling any pencils tonight, for God's sake, don't point it at anyone or use it for anything other than writing and drawing. Doing so could be DANGEROUS.
That's all you really need to know for safety on Halloween. Well, not really. There's probably a ton more of stuff but I'm not gonna bother with any of it because that was just a lame way to post some pictures I had and maybe write something about them.
Actually, wait. I do have one more thing for you guys to do. All of you in college right now, try to get your whole dorm to fill a room up with candy and get somebody to go swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck does in his bank. Take a video and send it back. Style points if you dive.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Candyblog: Halloweenday Edition
Sunday, October 28, 2007
HALLLOOOOOWEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNkinda
Yesterday I went with my host father to go see the Shimabara Castle, which is about an hour away from here. As you can see from the photo , it was a really nice day. A little windy, but nothing too too strong; just strong enough to mess up my hair for every photo I was in.
Photos weren't allowed inside the castle which was a bummer because there was plenty of interesting stuff that I wanted to show you guys. They had a ton of samurai armor, lots of really interesting sword hilts and other stuff from that sort of time period. On the top floor they had an observation deck. The view would have been great but they put a dang fence up to make sure people wouldn't fall off. 
This dude was also hanging out in the castle. He wanted to give me a ride on his ox/fire/cart thing, but uh, I already had a ride. Instead I just snagged a SUPER SECRET pic.
Outside they had a bunch of stands where people sold antiques and clothes. In one of the booths Ultraman tried selling me some guaranteed genuine watches, but I already bought one from Megazord so I had to turn him down.
After the castle, we went up the volcano that was in the area. Getting up there took what seemed like forever, because the road up was super curvy and all the cars in front of us took it really unnecessarily slow. After driving for quite a while, we made it up to one of the observation posts. It must have been right 0n the edge of the face facing the wind, because the wind was SUPER strong up there. Everyone who was up there had to lean into the wind constantly to avoid being blown over, and every once in a while a huge burst would make everyone stumble and fall over. After hanging out in the winds for a few minutes, my arms were freezing cold so we rushed back into the car and took off to see the national park they set up further up the mountain. It must have been on the opposite face or something, because the wind was totally calm over there.
My host father also showed me around a natural hot spring in the area. Walking over there, I could smell the springs about half a block before we actually got to it; it wasn't very strong, but I could definitely smell sulfur in the air. And then when we got there, there were huge clouds of steam from the springs that would blow right into my face and those smelled something strong. There was a hotel and spa right next to the hot springs that used the water as their hot water source. Apparently the surrounding neighborhood did as well, which I thought was pretty cool.
Also, there were a bunch of people selling hard-boiled eggs at the hot springs. My host dad called them "spa eggs" and told me that they cooked them at the hot springs themselves. I guess they just came across some hot springs while real hungry one day, took a big whiff and were all "MAN THIS IS A SIGN". He said that they were supposed to be really delicious, but to tell you guys the truth, they tasted exactly like hard-boiled eggs that I would make on the stove at home.
After getting back and telling my host mom that I wasn't able to take photos of the armor in the castle, she was all DANG THAT AIN'T NO FAIR. Turns out her dad owns his own suit of armor. So today we rolled on over to their house, which is less than a five minute drive from my current house, and checked out the armor. It's not a for real ancient samurai armor set, but it's still pretty cool (she said it was made about twenty years ago). Also, her dad had a katana as well, which came in handy because a tank attacked the house while we were there and I had to chop it up, because, you know, katanas can totally do that (I saw it on the internet).
I think most importantly though, her dad owned a HUMONGOUS teapot, complete with a sad-looking dog statue. 
Then we went over to her older sister's house, which was probably under five hundred feet away (I guess family sticks close together here). They had just gotten a baby pidgeon which, to tell the truth, was actually kind of gross. I mean, birds without feathers just kinda look odd. Especially when they open up their wings, because it just looks like a skeletal being awkwardly flopping about. It was still a pretty rad bird though. Except when it pooped on the table. Nothing is rad when it poops on a table.
Then after lunch I went to meet the Rotary exchange students here in Isahaya for something or other. I don't really know what the significance of the meeting was; they just said a bunch of stuff in Japanese and gave us cake. Also, they told us that in the future, we're gonna go to a Mt. Asso (giggle!), where we will get to have the delicious Asso Milk (tee hee!).
Later on I went over to my English teacher's, Mr. Tysen, house for a Halloween party. They don't really do anything for Halloween over here even though all the stores are all OOOOOHHH HALLOWEEN ORANGE AND BLACK. So Mr. Tysen, an American, has set up a small course of houses where they know there'll be candy for his kids and friend's kids to go trick or treating at. When we went out with the kids, they rushed ahead of us so quickly, so by the end it was just me and the other adults walking back to the house without the kids. All the other adults and I hadn't dressed up as anything except Mr. Tysen, who was dressed up as a pirate. So he was left walking around at night, dressed up as a pirate during a Halloween party in a country that has no idea what Halloween is. FUN TIMES.
Monday, October 22, 2007
I don't really have enough for a full blow CandyBlog Deux, and really, this stuff isn't candy. It is, however, the best idea ever.
Dear readers (apparently there are a ton of you now) I give you baked potato flavored potato chips.
Just think about that for a moment.
What they've done here is amazing.
They've taken a potato and said, "Hey, I feel like having some baked potato. Why don't we cut this up, fry it, and pile a bunch of artificial flavorings to make it taste like a baked potato? Also let's put some Hokkaido butter on it. I love that stuff."
Note to Japan: Next I would like to see some sausages that taste like bacon, cold noodles that taste like ramen, and fried chicken that has the texture and taste of boiled meat.
For some reason, the Japanese are all up ons Hokkaido butter. Apparently it's the best butter in the country, but I'm pretty sure it's the only butter in the country. I think Hokkaido is probably the only main island that has conditions that allow people to raise cattle (I think it's about the same latitude and climate as New York state), so the whole thing just sort of seems kinda dumb to me. Kinda like seeing a bunch of grass and being all, "Oh man was this grass grown in soil? Oh dang that must be some pretty superior grass you got there. Much better than non-soil grass."
Also, they do a bunch of weird flavors for anything over here. It's kinda like how England has some pretty unusual but delicious flavors, only uh, weirder. So far I've only really had these baked potato flavored chips and some bologna flavored ones, but I've seen some dumpling flavored ones around that I've been meaning to try. I'll keep you posted.
Ain't nothing much happened here for a bit, but I'm supposed to be heading off to a volcano and a castle this weekend, so we'll see how that goes.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Bunkasei
Today was the culture festival of my high school over here. It took up pretty much the entire week in preparation, just like the sports festival. Each class transformed their classroom into some sort of exhibition of Japanese culture. Or at least, that's what the school intended. Instead, each class just sort of did stuff they thought was cool and went on from there. My class' theme was "time travel" and "illusions & trick images". But uh, the time travel was really just HEY LOOK AT OLD THINGS and the illusions were mostly MC Escher paintings and woodcuts.
Other classes had a bunch of signs up telling people to check out their rooms. One poster said "Let's Balloon House!" and I thought to myself, "yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We should balloon house." It was actually a pretty rad setup. There were nets on the doors to the room, and a ton of balloons filling up the room. There was such a ridiculous amount in there, they came up to about my chest. I asked someone how many balloons they put into the room; six thousand. SIX THOUSAND.
Some other classes also had a wedding dress made out of tissue paper, some candy, and Spiderman 3 (best movie ever). The school also put on a bunch of performances and stuff, including some plays and music stuff. The school's brass band was really damn good. I remember someone coming up and saying "Oh hey come check out the band, we're number one in Nagasaki prefecture," but I was all "Listen, son, I've studied under Nicholas Nigel Gerard Gooch 'Momma Mia' Mariconda. Get your fool self out of here with your sub-standard trash out of here before you embarrass yourself any more," and with that, he bowed his head in shame and left the room. But seriously though, the band was ridiculously good. They played a bunch of cool charts and a couple of the students played some pretty good solos, which reminded me of how much I need to practice and that I hadn't really since I got here.
Also, there was a dude with no arms. Or at least, no real arms. He had these two plastic arms, one with a hand and the other with a manipulateable claw. I didn't understand anything he said, because he was talking in Japanese, but from the pictures he was showing, I guessed he was hit by a car or something. I figure that usually people who have horrible stuff happen to them and then talk about it at schools are grumpy or have a mission or something, but this guy seemed pretty peppy. He also kept taking his arms out of his plastic arms and it kind of creeped me out. He also did a huge calligraphy painting for the school, which was pretty cool. However, how awesome that might sound, I actually have seen something even more mind-blowing. In Taiwan I saw some dude painting fans by holding the brush in his mouth, because he was completely armless. And it wasn't even just coloring and junk, it was quality decorative painting. Sorry fake-arm dude, but armless painter man takes the cake on this one.
But yeah, anyway. The different themes of the classes were pretty interesting. The Interact Club (a Rotary-related club whose meetings I attend because, uh, they tell me to. I don't understand anything at those meetings either) had a nice display of their mission and some of the awards they've received (a ton), and other clubs did some good stuff too.
Like look at this. This is the program for the school festival. Oh look! ESS (English Speaking Society. More like "Everyone Freezes Up When I Speak English To Them Society") has "Global Warming" as their theme. You can see my class, 1EI, up at the top with "Taimu Turaberu" as the theme. And there are a few other things and uh.....oh.......oh my...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DAMN YOU DISNEY
DAMN YOU ZAC EFRON
DAMN YOU VANESSA HUDGEONS
Sunday, October 14, 2007
KENDOOOOOO
Kendo pretty much took over this weekend. I started my weekend on Saturday with Kendo practice at the high school early in the morning. They were preparing for the match on Sunday and practice was mostly just packing for the next day. After that, I went to a Kendo demonstration set up by the Rotary clubs of Isahaya City for the exchange students at Nagasaki Wesleyan University.
They had one of the top 100 Kendo fighters in the entire nation there helping out with the demonstration, as well as three guys trained in actual swordfighting. They set up a wooden post with a bundle of tightly packed straw strapped to the top, and this is what one of the dudes did to it.
BASBDBASDBASDB
I GUESS YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT HE DID TO IT IF THE INTERNET WASNT BROKEN AND TOOK A YEAR TO NEVER UPLOAD A VIDEO
HE CUT IT A LOT
REALLY EASY
THAT IS WHAT HE DID
Then they asked for volunteers to try it out. Did Jer go up? Yes he did. Did he fail terribly? Yes he did.
Holding the katana was ridiculously scary. I was shaking a little the entire time. It was heavy, and I was really afraid I was gonna let go of it and it would fly into some guy's head and they would be all DUDE WE GOTTA CUT YOU NOW THAT WAS NOT COOL. So when it came time to cut the bundle, I made it about halfway through, and knocked the post to the ground. Oops. One of the other exchange students had better luck than me, but he also wasn't able to cut through the whole thing. TOUGH.
Also, there was a camera crew there and they interviewed me about the katana stuff. I still don't really know Japanese all too well so I just sort of stumbled through a bunch of words and then smiled. This is the second time I've been interviewed on camera here in Japan and pretty much my strategy has remained the same.
A little while later after a performance by two of the swordfighter dudes, somebody said something in Japanese and a ton of people in the audience started calling my name and pointing to me. Then the big Kendo dude called me over and told me to put on the Kendo armor because I was going to be fighting a match. I tried telling them that I haven't ever played a match before ever, but they didn't understand English so they were just YEAH ALRIGHT PUT THINGS ON HIM AND GIVE HIM A STICK. LET'S SEE WHAT THIS DUDE CAN DO.
Normally the Kendo participants have traditional dress on and all that, but I just had jeans on and the armor over it. Like I said, I was completely unprepared. One of the rotarians had just given me my own shinai (kendo bamboo sword) so I used that. I actually didn't do too bad for my first fight. I went up against a girl, and I'm pretty sure the judges went super easy on me, but I won the fight.
Afterwards we had sushi.
It was delicious.
VOOOOOOM NEXT DAY
Woke up at six today. Well, six-thirty, but the alarms started at six. I biked over to the school to meet the other Kendo guys at 7, and we left in their cars for the Kendo meet. On the drive over, the car we were in had a TV in it. I'm not talking one of those hang-over-the-back-of-the-driver's-seat TVs that plays DVDs, but an actual TV that got real TV channels. The audio was playing constantly, but the video only came on whenever the GPS wasn't being used (they used the same screen), like at a stoplight or something.
The Kendo meet was pretty huge. It was at some sort of sports complex with a baseball field and tennis courts outside. We went into the Basketball court building where they outlined the Kendo areas on the courts with tape. Then they started practicing before the match. There were a MILLION people there. It was redonk. Also, the girl who I had fought yesterday was there too, along with all the other people from the demonstration. They all recognized me and waved, which was nice the first time, but after passing them by for the seventh time I started looking for alternate routes around them because it was really awkward passing by and having absolutely nothing to say, but still trying to share the same enthusiasm they had.
The matches were fun to watch, and I got a bunch of cool photos in. However, for some reason sports gatherings always make me feel kinda sick. I don't know what it is, but I just start to feel like shit after a while at any sports gathering. After a few hours at the meet, I got a headache and fell asleep, hoping it would go away because I forgot my excedrin at home. I woke up to a bunch of the kendo kids and their parents saying "good morning" in Japanese to me but I wasn't fooled; it was still around noon, and I still had a headache. Luckily I was able to communicate that I had a headache and one of the parents happened to have some ibuprofen or tylenol and gave it to me. A bunch of water and another nap later, I was doing alright.
When we got back to school from the meet, we went inside to see the coach and he didn't really seem pleased with the club's performance. We had to sit on our legs for a huge speech from him which I didn't really understand, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. I guess the first-years weren't acting like he wanted them to and they didn't do so hot during the competition. The speech must have really sucked for them, because it sucked for me and it was neither directed towards me (can't participate in competitions, too old) nor did I understand any of it. It was terrible because sitting on our legs for so long hurt like a motherfucker, especially on the hardwood floor of the Kendo room. We have to do it every day for practice, but usually only for a minute or so. I'm not sure how long the lecture was, but I do know that when we went into the room the sun was out, and when it was over, it wasn't anymore. After the lecture everyone had pins and needles like WTF. Most of the Kendodudes couldn't stand up, and the team captain almost fell over trying to walk. I guess seeing that made sitting through that whole speech worth it.
seriously dude he was all whooooaaWHOAAA and had to grab onto one of the other guys to keep from falling and almost everyone else was going around on their knees because their legs were so dead
Friday, October 12, 2007
Uh just a quick question here
you guys wanna scrap a few bucks together and get this?
I think we could make it into a pretty rad pad.
Link
MONgoro
Have you ever had to bite your tounge to stop laughing because you're afraid it might be rude?
I did today, and to tell the truth, what I was laughing at really wasn't all that funny. In fact, I think the fact that I was laughing at it probably makes me a douchebag.
Today we had to give some speeches in class on national festivals back at home (I didn't because I am so NEEWWWWWWWWW) and uh, some Mongolians went up to talk. Now I would like everyone to understand that I have absolutely nothing against Mongolians; I think they're fine people. However, the way they say "Mongolian" in Japanese along with their accent just made me fall apart in class. Pretty much all they were doing was saying "MONgoro" (with a swoop up to the "n", and a slide back down on "goro") to describe their national festival, and every time it was mentioned, I cracked up.
After the first dude went down, I thought I was safe. I had made it through his speech without bursting out loudly, but I was teetering on the brink the entire time. But then the second Mongolian went up after him AND HE DID THE EXACT SAME THING. By the end of his speech, I was biting my toungue and crying from laughter. I never cried from laughing before. I figured it would be from laughing at something ridiculously hilarious, but apparently for me it happens for the dumbest reasons ever.
When class was over, I felt like a big douche for laughing at how they talked. Hopefully they won't get angry and team up on me because there's like five of them in the class. And if they didn't realize I was laughing at their speeches this time, hopefully they won't give any more speeches about their home country's customs, because I dunno if I could make it through another speech.