In some of my classes, I give a quick little weekly quiz, just to make sure the students are keeping up with the homework. This was from a first-year English conversation course–first-year university, I might add. We’d been doing a section that used mystery stories, so it had some crime vocabulary. She didn’t know the answer to number five, obviously.

Hey, if you don’t know the answer, bombard the teacher with cuteness!

Ah, I love this country.

[  Mood: Shocked ]
[  Currently: Working at avoiding work ]
We had a game the other night, and Kelly brought over this:

Yes, that’s right: cucumber-flavored Pepsi. I’ve seen the stuff on the shelves in a couple of convenience stores since then.

How does it taste, you may ask? Well, about as vile as you’d expect. Imagine taking Pepsi, which is pretty much like drinking battery acid anyway, and trying to make it taste like carbonated, liquid, acidic cucumber. And of course they failed to make it taste even vaguely like cucumber, which I suppose would be a little refreshing in this heat–but at least it’s day-glo green!

I had to drink a whole Belgian beer to get the taste out of my mouth. Game-mastering while drunk is a small price to pay.

[  Mood: Happy ]
Didn’t have a chance to use my computer yesterday, but it’s still the 19th in America as I write. On June 19th, 1865, Gen. Granger arrived with his troops at Galveston, Texas, and announced that all slaves are henceforth freed, thus ending slavery in the United States for once and all, and thus pushing forward by a huge step America’s long journey to become the country it’s supposed to be.

We may never actually reach the goal, but the journey is worth making nonetheless. Whenever we wander off the path, we’re being untrue to ourselves. Same for when we decide we’re perfect as we are, or that we’re always right. Don’t let anyone scare you into going backwards. Onward and upward!

"STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei."

Almost forgot, today is Bloomsday.

"Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and saw that Stephen Dedalus had been turned into a zombie. He ran screaming back up the stairs, only to meet Kinch, also zombified, waiting for him at the top. He hurled the useless razor away and held out the mirror, which froze Kinch in place, an undead Narcissus. The bowl made an effective blunt instrument of dispatch. As Kinch fell to the floor, truly lifeless, Buck pirouetted to meet his fellow student shambling up the stairs."
–excerpt from Ulysses II: Leopold vs. the Walking Dead

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to Asobi Seksu ]
Like I mentioned yesterday, I’m going to be a grampa at 40. But I’m not 40 yet! Nossir, I have exactly one month to go from today. My birthday will be on Bastille Day. Viva la revolucion! or something like that.

So my darling Junko asked me what I want for my birthday, and I thought, hey, why not tell everyone? No, no, I’m not trying to get Revolution SF readers to give me presents. Seriously, I’m not. I do have family and friends who read this blog–for the rest, it’s more of a "life overseas" thing. That is, what does Superdave miss from back home? What, when the culture-shock blues hit (and yes, even after 12 years here, it happens now and then), gives Superdave comfort?

As Vincent Vega said before Butch Coolidge shot him to pieces as he was coming out of the toilet, "It’s the little differences." Mostly food-related. Every year, a few things we couldn’t used to get appear in stores here, but there’s still some crucial items that simply cannot be found. Friends and family will know that the first item on the list is sunflower seeds.

Now, I can buy sunflower seeds here. But they’re for baking, and they have no shells, and what’s the point of eating sunflower seeds without shells? I like sesame, too, but I’m not going to just pour a bag of sesame seeds into my mouth and start munching. No, the ritual of the sunflower seed involves a shallow dish balanced on my chest as I lay on the sofa, with a good book on my stomach and a glass of iced tea (preferably with a wedge of lime) in easy reach. I pour a few seeds into the dish, then, while reading, pop them in my mouth one by one, rolling them around to get the salt (or ranch-flavored powder, or BBQ, or whatever–anything but dill, yech) and cracking them delicately. Some people just chew them up and spit out the splintered remains of the shell, but I crack it into two hulls with my back teeth, fish out the seed with my tongue, and deposit the nearly intact shell into a growing pile on the dish, in a separate pile from the waiting seeds. When I really need to just chill out, this gives me hours of pure bliss.

Naturally, my favorite brand is David Sunflower Seeds, especially the low-salt kind, though other flavors are welcome for a change. Regular-sized bags are best–the economy-sized bags are too big, because half the seeds will go stale before I can eat them. I can nurse a regular bag for two or three weeks.

(And shout-out to my man Rich, who picked me up a couple bags on his recent trip home–thanks again, man!)

Next, something I ran across during my visit home in February: powdered energy-drink packets. Junko and I both love these. Our favorite is the Crystal Light On-the-Go Peach Tea flavor, though the Wild Strawberry is great too, and the Lipton Green Tea to Go with Mango flavor is pretty good. A box has ten little packets, each with just enough powder for a 1/2-liter bottle. Drinks in Japan are expensive, and these are way, way cheaper, and tastier than many drinks here too. Perfect for going to the gym. I bought four boxes, and I wish I’d bought more, because we’re almost out now.

A lot of other food that I usually ask for, like chili powder and gravy mix and the like, I don’t really need this year, because I bought so much of it in February. Maybe I’ll ask for that for Christmas. But I have finished off all my Jolly Ranchers and Strawberry Twizzlers, so I’m jonesing for more of those. I’m also craving Reeses Mini-Peanut-Butter Cups, but as we found out last year, you don’t want to send those in the summer. They will arrive inedible, especially if sent by surface.

Same goes for cheese, unfortunately. But even though cheese is pretty expensive here, it’s heavy; it’s still probably cheaper to buy it here than to ship it over, so that’s out anyway. And there are out-of-the-way gourmet shops that carry cheeses of all kinds here, if you know where to look.

As for non-foods, well, I’m pretty stocked up on Tylenol. I bought a couple of big jars, so that’ll last us more than two years, probably. But I’m tempted to start surreptitiously importing the stuff and selling it. Extra-Strength Tylenol is illegal here for some reason, and the Regular-Strength (300mg) is amazingly expensive. Let’s see, I figured it out once…the biggest box you can buy is 20 caps, which is something like 1800 yen, or $15. Stateside, I bought a 500-cap jar of 500mg caps for $8, which means Japanese Tylenol is about, um, 9,000% more expensive, if I’m doing my math right. I could be a drug lord here, selling it for half the local price. Until the Customs cops caught me, anyway.

I also have plenty of American deodorant. Japanese deodorant is getting a little better, but most brands still seem to work on the placebo principal. In any case, they do nothing for big, smelly Westerners. I bought more than a year’s worth of Arm & Hammer Ultra-Max Solid in Feb., and I heard that the local Costco has finally started carrying US armpit spray, anyway.

But I am nearly out of the very funky, sci-fi shaving cream I bought in the US. If I’d known how much I was going to like it, I’d have bought a couple extra cans. I tend to get lots of nicks on my throat when I shave, and this Gillette Complete Skin Care Multi Gel is better than anything I’ve found here. Combined with L’Oreal Men’s Expert ADS ComfortMax Anti-Irritation Aftershave Balm (man, these freakin’ names!), I have almost no shaving cuts now. I’m running low on both of them.

Hell, after all that, the companies should be sending me free samples. Um, other than that, I guess Amazon.com gift certificates are always welcome, and since they can just be emailed, there’s no shipping cost. I order a box of books from them about once every two months.

Anyway, for my close friends and family who would’ve been sending me presents anyway, the above is the kind of thing I would jump for joy to receive. For those of you who weren’t planning to send gifts, let me repeat: I’m not asking you to. This is for education purposes only.

EDIT: And a link to our very own Revolution SF Geek Gift Guide. It’s for Father’s Day, but that’s close enough.

[  Mood: Shocked ]
OK, for those of you just joining us, scroll down a little and take a look at the picture in the previous entry. That’s my daughter Sayumi and her boyfriend Shuuji. Last night, they took us out to dinner and told us they’re getting married, and that Sayumi is carrying a passenger, due to arrive in January. I’m about to gain a son-in-law and become a grandfather, at age 40.

Am I happy? Yes. Am I worried? Oh yes. But I’m more happy than worried. Shuuji’s a good guy, and they both seem to have good heads on their shoulders (aside from their apparent inability to handle birth control ). It’ll be a tough adjustment for everyone, but my life, especially since leaving Texas, has been nothing but one tough adjustment after another, so change doesn’t scare me. We’ll help them through it.

[  Mood: Happy ]
A couple weeks back, we took Sayumi and her boyfriend Shuuji out for dinner at an Okinawan place. Shuuji turns out to be a very nice, polite guy. He served out the food from the platters to everyone, and was fun to talk with. Excellent food–the goya pork was fantastic. Best thing about that was, the ladies mostly found it to be too bitter, so I got a bigger portion.

Once again I forgot my real camera, so you’ll have to be content with a blurry cell phone shot. That flower-bracelet/watch on Sayumi’s wrist is the present we gave her.

Sayumi surprised us by remembering Mother’s Day, and gave Junko some perfume that she’d bought at Walmart while we were in America back in February. I told her we still need to go shopping for her Christmas present: a notebook PC to take with her for her year in China, starting in September.