Potion!

Final Fantasy XII and Suntory have put out a drink called "Potion," packaged like the revitalizing drink in the Final Fantasy series of games. I saw the commercial yesterday on tv.

I'm gonna have to buy it. There are apparently 2 regular designs which sell for 191, and a premium box version (1 bottle + 1 FF12 art museum card, 6 different bottle designs) that sells for 600 yen.

because nothing is complete without a picture of a guinea pig

It's not a very good picture, but you get the idea. Guinea pig out for stroll with owner.

Santohka, Ippudo ramen

Two other ramen favorites of mine.

山頭火（さんとうか Santouka）has quite a few restaurants around the Tokyo area, and you can even buy their ramen in the supermarkets. My favorite is the salt ramen (塩ラーメン）. It's a very tasty, flavorful soup. The pork is average if I remember correctly, but they have a special とんとろ fatty pork version which is particularly delicious. The pork is tender and tasty. A bit salty though, so a little pork goes a long way. The noodles are normal but not bad. I love the salt ramen so I've never tried their miso or soy sauce versions. They have a nice soy sauce egg that you can add as a side topping.

一風堂 (いっぷうどう Ippudo）also has quite a few restaurants in the Tokyo area, but most of them aren't very convenient to get to. Ippudo is a Hakata style ramen place, so their specialty is my favorite soup, tonkotsu. Their tonkotsu is flavorful and a bit on the heavy side. The pork was not bad, and the noodles are quite good. They also have lots of toppings like garlic and I think kimchee? so you can have a lot of fun with your bowl of ramen. The last time I went I had a little too much fun crushing fresh garlic into my ramen, and my body got kind of upset with me, but it was delicious. Ippudo lets you specify the hardness of your noodles, and they recommend the moderately cooked noodles. Since I am not a true ramen fanatic I always get the softest version available (recommended for children) but I like it that way. They offer two types of tonkotsu soup, 赤丸新味 (あかまるしんあじ akamaru shin aji）red bowl new flavor and 白丸元味（しろまるもとあじ shiromaru moto aji）white bowl original flavor. The red version is a thicker tonkotsu soup, and the original flavor is a bit lighter.

Next time I'll write about a new tonkotsu favorite, Tou soba.

Not much going on

It was super cold for a while but has been rather spring-like the past couple days.

I've been pretty busy with work lately, and studying Japanese vocabulary again.

Oh, I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test level 1! Very happy about that.

The pollen season is starting again. A large portion of the Japanese population is apparently afflicted with various pollen allergies. It's called 花粉症（かふんしょう kahunsho）.

late trains

Lately the first train I take to work has been late. Specifically, the train has been running late for 2 days. It's a little disconcerting for the train to be running late. I feel like the world has gone a little akilter, and the day is abnormal. It's kind of like the feeling I get when it has been declared a snow day and school has been cancelled. I think, "I should be in school, but I'm not! How odd!"

I find my expectation of timely trains to be very amusing. My world has become a world where trains run on time, within a couple minutes. A minute or two doesn't disconcert me, but let there be a six minute delay and suddenly everything is a little out of order.

This hasn't affected my schedule personally. I normally take a 9:21 train, but I've been getting on the 9:15 train which has been arriving at 9:21. Heh.

In general, it's unusual for the train to be late, and even more unusual for it to be late on consecutive days. However, rain usually delays train schedules a bit.

In case you're curious, my commute consists of about 15 minutes of walking and 2 trains.

how long does asparagus last?

For people (like me) who don't know much about cooking related things such as food storage, there are web sites like this one, which answered my question of how long asparagus lasts in the refrigerator.

When you don't have "common sense," there's the Internet!

happy 2006 and overeating

Happy 2006! May it be a good year.

I have been overeating almost consistently since vacation started on the 28th. At least I went swimming once. I will go swimming this weekend too. It's been a little hard to eat enough vegetables too. For example, if I go to the convenience store, my eyes automatically seek out the grilled pork bento, which consists of salt, pork, and rice. Salads just look boring in comparison. And have you noticed that it's a lot of work to eat a salad? Stuffing leaves into your mouth is a very messy process. Cutting the leaves up into bite sized pieces and getting them to stay on the fork also takes time.

I went to the Buddhist temple Senso-ji in Asakusa with my friend's family for the traditional midnight visit. We actually left before midnight because the lines were crazy and it was really cold. I took lots of pictures but most of them are probably too dark.

Starbucks and other stores actually started selling their 福袋 (grab bags) at midnight. These grab bags are like mystery packages - they contain a variety of items worth more in total than the purchase price. The catch is that you don't know what is inside until you buy it. Uniqlo sells grab bags labelled by size. Prices can range from approx. $20 and upwards. Apparently there are some really expensive grab bags available at department stores. Hanshin Department store had a special 2004万円 (about $200,000) bag to celebrate the 2003 Hanshin Tigers baseball team's championship. Limited to exactly one bag, at least 100 people applied to buy it. (source: a site on grab bags)