This is Kirin’s Pilsener offering. I’ve had it in a bottle before, but didn’t realize it was a mass-market product. It was better on draught, but still on the unremarkable side. It leaned toward the dry/highly attenuated side, but the decoction was weak to the point that it almost tasted like it wasn’t 100% barley malt, but had rice as an adjunct. The hopping was adequate to let you know that it was a pils, but it definitely wasn’t the rich offering that the competing Suntory Malts Premium Pilsener is. Flavor is clean and without any really bad traits, but really is somewhat plain. Whee. Continue reading ‘Heartland Beer’
Archive for the 'Culture' Category
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MOS crafts some really good Japanese-style hamburgers. They aren’t modified from a Western recipie to conform to Japanese tastes: They are built from the ground up for domestic consumption – that’s probably why they bombed when they opened two stores in Honolulu decades ago. The Tobikiri hamburger is no exception to the domestic tastes rule. That’s not to say that if you aren’t Japanese, you won’t like this burger – it just isn’t the plain salty charred meat slab hidden beneath ketchup and mustard that you are used to. The patty is made from a mix of beef and pork (aibiki) and is topped with a thick slice of Hokkaido-produced bacon and sauteed onions with a bacon-shoyu sauce. They pride themselves on domestic sourcing, so the beef, pork, bacon, and onions are all domestic. This is reflected in the price, since the burger alone is 420-yen (around $5.38 USD). If you go to their website, they have a breakdown for the sourcing of ingredients on the product page. Continue reading ‘MOS Tobikiri Hamburger Sandwich “Atsugiri Bacon”’
The JMA forecast calls for a clear morning followed by rain this afternoon. It’s about time for stores to open, so I’ll head out soon, but it’s clear blue out, so I feel a little incredulous about the prediction of rain. This is the JMA though, so I do believe it. Their forecasts run accurate to almost the hour. I’ll take my eVent jacket…
(0)Apples are pretty synonymous with Aomori-ken, and the souveneir hawkers are almost completely invested in apples being the singular omiyage item. Surprisingly, I didn’t find the specific apple item I was looking for – an old-fashioned steel can of apple jam. The apples are generally good, but not all of them are great. Most are grow around the city of Hirosaki, although the first experiments with growing apples were done on the slopes of Hakkoda-san to the South of Aomori City. The apple trees are fairly small and loaded with fruit, like one every 15-20cm. Reflective mylar sheets are placed under the trees to reflect the sunlight and make the undersides of the fruits change color to match the tops. Continue reading ‘Apples and Autumn’
Man, my sleep cycle is going to be all messed up. Need some ToughMan! Rode the most painful train seat from Sapporo to Aomori on the overnight train through the Seikan Tunnel. After pounding a between-the-rib-bones-of-a-maguro meat donburi, it was off on a great circuit of the West part of Aomori to Akita and back again. Except for the parts where the satellite reception was lost due to tunnels, I’ve got like 800km on the GPS today! Didn’t get many good pictures because of the speeding train and front lighting, but got to see a nice SL.
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With plate lunch and burger prices in Hawai’i rising to the $10 USD mark, let’s see what I got for lunch today from the Seicomart convenience store in Japan. Seicomart is one of the few chains that have actual service kitchens in the back of the store, so they produce hot meals instead of only having cold lunches that the register staff can microwave for you. It took me the entire time it took me to eat my entrée to figure out what the heck it was being called because of the katakana on the label. Let’s see… that’s a “he” with a handakuten mark, followed by a little “tsu” and a “ha” with a handakuten mark and a long sound mark… “Pepper-burg don.” It was essentially a deconstructed loco moco. The flavor was really good. There was even a nice little piece of broccoli and a ragout of onions and carrot as a concession to nutritional balance. For 450-yen, equivalent to around $5.75 USD, it was a good value, considering it was between “mini” and full-sized plate lunch in size, but priced less than a mini. Continue reading ‘Cheap Lunch’
My lower back and ass hurt from sitting in worn-out JAL seats all the way across the Pacific yesterday. At least the plane wasn’t stinky like the last time I was on JAL. Can’t wait for Hawaiian to get approval for the direct CTS route. Narita either had the A/C turned off, or had the heaters turned on, because it was hotter than Honolulu International if you can imagine that. Broke a sweat there where I didn’t back home. Some JDM girl in front of me in the domestic check in line cracked a silent fart of death just as I bent down to check the TSA lock on my bag. I actually got a gag reflex and had to drink water to get the gullet peristalsis moving back in the “down” direction.
(0)Seen late last night at 12:30 on my way home cruising through Waikiki on Kalakaua in front of the Outrigger, two JDM girls in one piece dresses playing around on skateboards. Wonder if the cops came by and gave them skate punks hastles for inappropriate behaviour.
Finally, a good HI5-0 episode. I feel they dropped the ball on the August March episode last week. If he was such a crafty, well-connected dude, he would have found a way out of the situation besides stepping back into traffic and turning into a greasy stain on Pali Highway. I guess the writers didn’t want yet another criminal eluding Five-O’s tenuous grasp. Man, they’ve killed off a pile of recurring characters recently! …oh, and I like how they patched the entrance holes, but not the exit holes on the inflatable boat.
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I hate when that happens! I was looking for something, but somebody had ignored the labels and removed the area where it was, leaving a weird spatial vortex where random places from random times would fill in the void spot. Dangerous. Just plain dangerous… and irresponsible too! There was just the label left. You just can’t make this kind of stuff up.