Oh yeah, been turning my room upside down. What’s this, Root’s cleaning his room? Didn’t make it for the New Year though. Been gradually reorganizing my room. Been dumping old piecemeal furniture bits, like the old color TV cabinet in my closet that was acting as shelf and replacing with more efficient shelving. Also picked up some Lundia wood shelving modules from City Mill to replace my desk and wall shelving. These are the wood shelving systems you’ll see throughout the store for displaying shelving. Pretty nice stuff. Not sure where they’re getting it from, this is Lundia euro stuff, not the Lundia USA. They look similar, but are not compatible, this stuff is in metric, although City Mill labels it in inches. Works fine. Not exactly cheap, the three uprights, seven shelves, and misc hardware set me back around $400, but it’s pretty nice. Solid wood, not particle board, goes together easily, adjusts easily. Will need to get the house fumigated sometime before it becomes termite food!
Archive for the 'Review' Category
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Latest variety pack I picked up, “American Originals”, this is the White Ale. Pours faintly cloudy yellow, moderate head that dissapates, carbonation stays moderately strong. Mouth feel is fairly light and crisp, with just a bit of body. A bit of citrusy tang, without really having citrus, being a Belgian white style. The added spice flavors are not very strong here, I can’t really detect them, this is not a Hoegarten. Mild bitterness that stays even through the middle and gradually fades. I can’t say this beer is very interesting. It’s drinkable, but not one to make me seek it out. I’d have to go with a middle of the line 2.5 out of 4 weiss monkeys.
Fairly new bento place, the Moilili location itself a new building. Finally got around to trying Kokorotei. They’re tag for uniqueness is that they make the bento fresh at time of ordering. Picked up a tonkatsu bento and a aji fry bento (not on regular menu). The size is a reasonable size, not humongous USA size (I’ll rant about this later in a SLC entry) and reasonably priced. The quicker its eaten, the better, esp for fried items. I hit heavy traffic heading home so it wasn’t piping hot fresh, but I can happily report that the bento were excellent. A step above what you’ll find at what passes as “depato”s here. The rice warm and fluffy, not cold, hard and clumped together. The entrees still crisp and not dried out. The katsu had some nice “marbling” going on, it wasn’t a totally lean cut. Doesn’t bother me as I’m not eating it every day, and the portion size was reasonable. The kiriboshi daikon and kinpira were nicely flavored and cooked. The shoga side was nice, a touch different from what you usually get with your sushi. The little piece of ornamental lettuce not wilted. The bed of cabbage the entree was on was soggy, but that was because it seemed to have been dressed with some kind of light vinager mustard dressing. If anything, the bonus little squiggle of spaghetti was the one unremarkable item. I believe the sides vary. Continue reading ‘Kokorotei’
Oh, krapp! I slept thru the first hour of the Kohaku! Once again, I sit in front of the TV on New Year’s Day watching the local delayed broadcast of the NHK “Red and White Song Festivalâ€. Let’s get to it forthwith. Hopefully I can catch the beginning in rebroadcast later… Going live!
Never shy about giving themselves a pat on their own shoulder, this year’s theme seems to be revolving around NHK’s morning drama, “Ge Ge Ge no Nyoubou”.
The hunger…
The Ba-Le sandwich I had for lunch wasn’t enough to carry me through to tonight’s late dinner, so I grabbed a snack when I got into McBike. I didn’t want to eat something big and spoil my appetite, so this smaller bar looked like the ticket. At about half the physical size and caloric count as most standard energy bars, this snack-sized bar had the added benefit of being made from recognizable whole grains and fruits – more like a Clif Bar rather than the weird extruded robot food I’ve come to expect inside a PowerBar wrapper. The flavor was mild and easy to take, sort-of like a lower-sugar version of the more common mass-marketed cereal/whole grain bars. The packaging was easy to open, and the bar was gone in about four bites. These would probably be pretty good as ride food, since I have the tendency to eat only half of a standard bar per break. On the negative side though, you’d be generating more trash to keep track of, and the dollar value is a bit lack – it’s about half of a standard bar in content, but not at half the price! That’s the price of convenience and healthy content. Continue reading ‘PowerBar Pure & Simple Cranberry Oatmeal Cookie Energy Bar’
Dammit, they tricked me! Last time I was at Ninja Market (Nijiya Market) I was happy to see they brought in the grape flavor Qoo drink, it was one of my favorites when i was in Japan. The flavor brought back memories of when I was a small kid living in Japan and popping these tiny little purple grapes during summer. So I bought a bottle and was savoring having it and just busted it out this Friday evening. Took a sip. WTH? This doesn’t taste right?! I look at the translated nutrition label, ack, sucralose! Now I notice the katakana 1/2 calorie thing on the label, curses!
Sorry you people finding our site through odd searches, this really is about bindage, not bondage. At the end of this past WB trip, I picked up a set of this years Burton Cartel bindings courtesy of the cool people at Showcase snowboard shop in Whistler village. I only rode them one day, but that was enough for me to do a review here on how it compares to the Flows I’ve been using for years. I started a season or two on some entry level strap bindings, then switched to Flows. Flows are a pretty clever quick entry design that makes use of folding back the highbacks to allow entry into the bindings. They did not suffer the problems of step/click-in binding system of clogging with snow, having to precisely place boot, and possibly its biggest was being able to use just about any conventional boot. Continue reading ‘Of Bindage’
If you have boot fitting problems, Fanatyk Co in Whistler village is the place to go. They’re primarily a ski shop but they know what they’re doing and can assist you with what ails you in the way of boots. I first visited them a couple seasons ago with my DC boots. Good boots, but they told me that they were flat out too big. They tried what they could & it helped, but they were right. Since then I’ve switched to a Thirty Two brand dual BOA in a ladies size. So far best fitting boots for my foot shape but I still get hot spot pressure points on the bone along top of foot. We heat formed the liners with additional spacer on the pressure point that gave more space at those points. Additional C pads at back of ankle bone put in to help with heel lift. I can report that riding the day after this was done was dramatically better.
One of the fun things about travelling around Japan is trying out regional food and beer. While in Iwanai on the Southwest coast of Hokkaido on the Sea of Japan, I had a chance to try this local offering. Considering that the farming belt above the coastal town of Iwanai was where hops were first cultivated in Japan, and this is where Sapporo Breweries sources the hops for their “all Hokkaido” Hokkaido Meibutsu “gold can” lager, I was expecting at some kind of mind-altering hops experience from this beer, particularly since it was labelled a “pilsner”. I was disappointed. Perhaps I should have been expecting something more from the “deep ocean seawater” also called out on the bottle labelling of this rather watery beer. This is another case like the Otaru Bakushu beers where you can start out with premium ingredients and still produce an unremarkable beer. The initial pour and good head excited me, but the first sip fell flat. There was a good carbonation dry bite, but as that faded out, it was replaced with neither a malty richness nor a hoppy bitterness. There was a faint flowery hop aroma if I tried really hard to detect it, but it was otherwise a rather bland beer. I guess I should be glad that it was mild and easily drinkable, as opposed to being strongly flavored in a negative way.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. Continue reading ‘Beer is Good – Iwanai Ji-biiru Lager’
As a follow-up to the review of the “green letter” Sapporo Classic, I dutifully tested a “blue letter” Classic. Between the two, I can say the 2010 Vintage “green letter” has a stronger malt flavor with a more Pilsener-style bitter. The “blue letter” is more of a traditional Japanese dry pale lager. I am now curious to see if the difference between the “blue letter” Classic and regular Sapporo Black Label is primarily the point of origin. Whereas the two Classic varieties and the “gold can” are brewed at a facility in Hokkaido and are set for retailling only in Hokkaido, the standard Black Label sold nationwide could have been made in any number of regional breweries. Both Classics have a similar color and level of carbonation, but remember, this wasn’t a side-by-side test. Although I said the “green letter” Classic had a more pronounced maltiness, the “blue letter” was not without a solid malt flavor. The Classic will be available beyond the production cutoff of the 2010 Vintage Classic, so it will be available into the forseeable future. Give one a try when you’re on Hokkaido! Continue reading ‘Beer is Good – Sapporo Classic lager’