Postcard To The Edge.

Not much to report tonight. I've been busy preparing postcards with the chance of winning an
オリジナルピンズセット (original pin set) of our favourite Marvel Heroes. The first card took me ages to write up (and I managed to mark my address upside down), subsequent cards were done much more quickly. The deadline is tomorrow so this leads me to believe that these eggs have been in the Conbini for much longer than I thought. This could be why I've been unable to locate them anywhere locally and of the half-dozen stores I hit today in Soma...nada.

I can write this off as Kanji practice!

Now That's What I'm Talking About!

I finish work early on Tuesdays, therefore I biked over to my local cinema to see what I could see, and I beheld, ハンコック (Hancock.) I haven't read any of the hubbub on this movie, so my opinions are basically my own, but I loved it. It is definitely not for the kiddies, but it had an excellent mix of humour, action and comicky goodness to make any adult a fan. (Yet even I thought the term "A-- Hole" was overused.) I noticed that the crowd at the theatre included many hot babes who were definitely there for a Will Smith fix. They were not disappointed!

Now I have to wait 2 more weeks until we get アイアンマン (IronMan.) This is why the pirates do their piracy thing. We need a faster turnaround on these movies Hollywooders! (Of course I just read that N.A. will have to wait until late 2009 for Miyazaki's epic of Ponyo, so I do get some small slice of revenge. That reminds me, I better go see that flick before it disappears.) By the way, see the picture of Green Hulky and Red Ironmanny Fries? The green is avocado-flavoured and the red is spicy.

Not surprisingly, there was some product placement inherent in the movies. Surprisingly it was for KitKat!
(Ah, who am I kidding, the only KitKat placement is in this here blog!)

Since my last foray into the crispy goodness of KitKat a few days ago, I have seen 4 different products gracing the shelves. First up, is Strawberry flavoured. I bought this on Sunday and tried it out on my co-workers yesterday. (Note to self: start keeping these in the fridge, they tend to melt in the sudden heatwave we're experiencing.) Though there was a slight strawberry-odour when the Mini was opened, I didn't detect any particular strawberry taste.


What does kick ass with this, is the packaging. Strawberry in Japanese is often written in hiragana as いちご (ichi-go) but it does have its own kanji as well. Check this out and see how it compares to: 苺味 (the second kanji is aji that refers to flavour.) Pretty neat, eh?






Then yesterday, I discovered ほうじ茶 (houji-ocha, a brown Japanese tea) and tried it out on some of my students. They found it yummy and said it was reminiscent of the tea, but neither I nor my co-worker & taste-tester, Kiyo, could tell the difference.






Then last night on my way home from work, I popped into the supermarket, and there amongst the frozen ice cream treats was a KitKat Kone! It has a frozen wafer stick in the middle and is surrounded by creamy chocolate encaptured in a wafer-cone. Not particularly KitKatty, but it was delicious.






Most disappointedly, on the suggestion of the aforementioned Kiyo, I popped into a McDonald's and tried a KitKat-flavoured McFlurry. It was like eating super-sweetened vanilla ice cream with crunchy chocolate chips. Not even a KitKat wrapping to make it worthy of a photo!

What could possibly be the next taste sensation? Stay tuned...つづく。。。

Familial Kanji.

I never did write down the Kanji names of my family members, so here goes:

Jones: Ji-on-zu 冶　恩　図 (A Diagram to Rule with Kindness)

mother Edna: (E-do-na) 絵　度　菜　(To Carry a Green Picture)

brother Mark: (Ma-aku) 魔　悪　(Aberrant Evil)...He loved this one, but my Japanese co-workers vehemently pooh-poohed it, so I created a more PC version: (Ma-ku) 真 久 (Continued Truth)

Sister-in-law Pat: There is no natural "pa" sound in Japanese, so I went with her nickname, Trish: (Tori-shu) 鳥 朱 (Vermillion Bird)

Niece Christie: (Kuru-su-chi) 来　素　知 (To come to Knowledge Simply)

Niece Torie (To-ri)　兎　利 (A Rabbit Village) (鳥 = Tori which means bird is too obvious, so I opted against it.)

Brother Stephen (Su-chi-ben) 守　知　文 (To Protect through Wisdom and Literature)

I presented these as calligraphed kanji and all were duly impressed. I'm going to create some for my sister and her family now and post them later.

Fawlty Towers, Etobicoke style.

I'd be remiss if I didn't bid thanks to Phil and Dawn for tolerating me all week. We had lots of fun together and my stay would have been very unpleasant were it not for Phillip and Dawn (and Honey, their dog.)


Here's the fan that I made for them...
Fi-ri-pu= compare truth in a prefecture (?)
Do-n = drink.

My kanji skills get evaluated.

I met up with a trio of friends on the Tuesday and presented them with their very own copies of my 書道 (shodo) expertise. All of us worked at a company called Market Facts (now Synovate) over the last 2 decades and all but Bob have moved on to bigger and better things.

Deb Irwin: a fellow sci-fi nut, she works for a bank in some kind of wacky managerial position (I don't really know what she does, and most of the time neither does she.)
Her kanji was: De-bo-ra (出　分　部)=The Department of Rising Odds
Eru-u-in　(得る　鵜　陰)To Get a Negative Cormorant



Dorothy Gordon: Dorothy used to be a theatrical and cinematic actress back in the 50's and 60's in Merry old London and immigrated to Canada in the 70's with her hubby. She has since retired from MF and has entered back into the world of acting in Toronto. I saw her in a play last year and she crops up in commercials and movies every now and then. We also have the distinction of working with Charles Bronson, albeit 20 years apart.
Doro-shi (泥　市)= Mud City
Go-don (剛　呑)= a Strong Drink



Robert Browning: I've known this guy for over 20 years now. He was a friend of a university mate, Blair and later became a close pal of mine. I got him the job at MF and apart from a 6-month leave of absence to work in PEI, he has never forgiven me for getting him that job.


Bo-bu (某　武) Don't be Strong
Brown-in-gu (茶色　印　具) Brown Seal Ingredient (I didn't feel like breaking "Brown" into 3 kanji, so I just used cha-iru which means brown)

Shodo is the way to go!

書道 or shodo (Japanese calligraphy) is painstaking work and a lot of fun. I spent the morning creating kanji combinations for my friends and family and then the afternoon painting them.







What do you think?

What the Heck is that Gibberish?

I have a request of my faithful readers out in cyberland. I occasionally write down some Kanji 漢字(Chinese Characters) in my posts. For those who live in Japan or those who have left Japan but brought their PC with them, reading these characters is easy (understanding them is another matter). I often get emails from home and, if there is any punctuation, it can't be interpreted by my computer and it comes up with some bizarre Chinese characters to try and compensate.

So my request is this: Does anyone know of a program that can be downloaded for free that will interpret Kanji? If so, please send it to me in a comment or to my
aoxoltl atmark hotmail.com
address. I will post it and then I can add more Kanji to my postings and make my Japanese friends happy. YOU may actually learn something too.
(ps. It's not that I'm so lazy that I can't research it myself, but rather, that since I can already read Kanji, I have no idea if the download is useful or not so I can't make recommendations.)