I’m glad my old car predates the higher mandated door height for passenger vehicles. Even with the door beams and side airbags, it’s probably not as safe as a current car in side impacts, but at least I can actually see out the side of my car. Also, aesthetically my car doesn’t look all “gangsta” with tall door sheetmetal and tiny windows like a gen2 Scion xB or Chrysler 300. My sills are around 20cm (8″) below the Scion tC parked next to me. That’s like barely below my sight line!
Author Archive for risu
Page 28 of 95
Ooo! I saw some lightly dried, lightly salted Hokke at Shirokiya’s Hokkaido Fair yesterday. It wasn’t cheap ($25 USD), but it isn’t common to see outside of Japan. I would have bought some if it weren’t for the fact that I wasn’t going to be home for several hours, and I didn’t want it to go bad (it was refrigerated). Root might be interested that they also had Matsumae-zuke (which can be expediently made into Matsutaka-zuke). I didn’t taste any (either) nor buy any when I was in Matsumae in 2008.
(0)The new limited filling flavor for the Akimune-an taiyaki is chocolate custard creme. I don’t want! Aaa…
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Dammit! The dude at Akimune-an has to get his ears checked. I don’t know how I can say, “two Oreo and two anko taiyaki, please,” and it gets misconstrued as, “two custard crème and two anko taiyaki, please.” It sounds nothing alike – not even close. And it wasn’t like he didn’t hear me because it was too noisy or I wasn’t speaking loud enough or clear enough since he didn’t ask, “what?” or even throw a quizzical eyebrow. Krapp! It would be the filling that I object to the most on intuitive levels and had absolutely no intention whatsoever of trying that I end up with. Since the special flavors rotate on a bi-weekly basis and I saw Oreo advertised last week, with my luck if I go back on Thursday, the flavor will have changed. If I say that I wasn’t really all that excited about Oreo flavor, someone will call sour grapes. Truthfully, I wasn’t dying to get some, otherwise I’d have ordered them last week. It’s being denied them and getting the shitty flavor instead that bothers me more than not actually getting to taste Oreo. Now I’m sad.
I heard about the Jack in the Box bacon milkshake in the newspaper yesterday, so it became my mission to try it out. They were running a special on their new BLT cheeseburger, so I got one of those as a meal deal and upgraded to the shake. I guess if I was really out for bacon in everything, I could have swapped out the fries for the bacon cheddar potato wedges. Continue reading ‘Bacon Makes Me Sad?’
I stopped by Chinatown Boardroom on this month’s First Friday to say goodbye to the downtown art space and surfboard showroom I enjoyed so much over the years. I got to talk to Eric and roughhouse with Enoki a bit, but Jackie wasn’t in when I was there. It’s difficult to write about a shop closure without getting into the whole “economic downturn” thing, but as Eric summed it up, the whole Chinatown scene has changed so much in the last 10 years, and that in addition to the poor economy has conspired against operating a small shop at a profit. Indeed Chinatown has gone from a seedy crime-infested underbelly to a thriving art community, but in recent years (think around when “block parties” started) the vibe has changed toward more of a hipster club scene. Art has become “old hat” downtown. Face it – hipsters only buy dumb hats and fixie bikes and each one fancies himself an artist, so they don’t really support the art communuity: Where hipsters go, the whole iToons-fostered culture of instantly downloadable sub-$5 consumerism soon follows and the idea of creativity is lost. Continue reading ‘So Long, Chinatown Boardroom’
After hiking Hawaii Loa Ridge, Root and I stopped by Koa Pancake House in Kaimuki for some post-hike nutrition. For some reason, I wanted pancakes, so I didn’t get any of the meat-and-eggs dishes and went straight for the blueberry pancakes. The full stack was five large pancakes. In retrospect, I probably could have just done the short stack of three. The pancakes were cooked properly and it looked like they used fresh blueberries as opposed to some frozen or canned slurry. They came served with real whipped butter (not heinous margarine) and were sweet enough with the berries that I really didn’t have to use much mystery syrup. I managed to eat all but maybe a little less than half of the last pancake. We got there right at the end of their operating day, so they were cleaning up while we were eating (they close at 14:00). Continue reading ‘Edible Briefs – Koa Pancake House Blueberry Pancakes’
Damn neighbors woke me up. It’s 04:45 dammit! I wish they would toke more and oof less…
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I was at Ward Center to pick up something, so I stopped in at Honolulu Chocolate Company and got a large hand-rolled chocolate indulgence for a snack. I didn’t have a cooler in the car, and it was a hot afternoon, so I was worried it wouldn’t survive. It made it through with a couple of bumps, even with me making a side-trip to Ala Moana. I hid it in the center console under my refrigerator-cold water bottle, but the car interior had already cooled off. Mmm… chocolate! First thing I did when I got down to The Pit was eat the truffle (after taking this picture of course)! Continue reading ‘Honolulu Chocolate Company Hand-Rolled Chocolate Indulgence’
I recently picked up a Garmin eTrex 30 GPS. It’s a good GPS for a good price, is easy to add maps to via a microSD card “slot” (not really a slot), and uses standard AA batteries or AA-sized lithiums or rechargables. The one thing that quickly became apparent while it was knocking around in my pants cargo pocket or chest rig pouch was that the lack of any key lock feature led to a random display every time I pulled it out, or random waypoints logged or purposely recorded ones deleted. The offender in this case was the multi-function toggle on the face of the unit. This toggle makes the navigation of the non-touch-screen eTrex very easy and intuitive, but it is easily actuated when the unit is on and put inside or against something. Continue reading ‘Garmin eTrex 30 Toggle Guard’