[  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.