Evil Tracey

First, Jamie Sale and Craig Simpson won "Battle of the Blades." Now Donny Osmond (and partner) won "Dancing with the Stars." What's next?

Notice that Sanjaya didn't appear on either show. Big mistake.

So the Kindle is now available to Canadians (albeit NOT on Amazon.ca). I wonder if Amazon will bring out a model that's waterproof. Then it could be taken into the bathroom. I mean, didn't they take into account that some people like reading in the tub (or while sitting on the toilet)?

The Oxford University Press picked "unfriend" as their word of 2009. It means the act of removing someone as a friend on a social networking site (like Facebook). I thought the term was "de-friend."

Oh, and Jamie Sale and Craig Simpson won Battle of the Blades last night. I wanted to gag. Jamie and David's syrupy skating programs (La Vie en Rose, anyone?) gave me serious hypoglycemia. I think I will have to watch a DVD set worth of CSI episodes to regain my equilibrium. (CSI is just plain gross. Criminal Minds is also gross, but marginally less gratuitously gross than CSI. Quincy covered the same material, only with less gore.)

Apparently, Hans and Fritz (the guys who temporarily bought the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant from Mean Monty Burns) were wrong; Germany isn't the ONLY land of chocolate. There were some interesting chocolates in Japan, too. So I decided to try some of them out.

Over here, we have KitKat bars in chocolate. Pretty dull, huh? In Japan, the KitKat bars come in different flavours. Every time I visited a kiosk (on the subway or the train) or convenience store, I checked to see if there were any interesting flavours.

While shopping in the duty free shop at Narita Airport, I noticed that each city/ region is represented by a different flavour of KitKat bar. Kyoto, for example, is represented by green (matcha?) tea. Kobe is represented by Kobe pudding. And Tokyo is represented by...shoyu. That's right; soy sauce-flavoured KitKats. Interesting.

This flavour is "Kinako ohagi aji," or soybean flour covered rice cake. It was actually pretty good. This video came in handy identifying the different types of chocolate.

This was a bit more mundane (but nonetheless tasty):

I came across a few other chocolates. The Morinaga bar is plum vinegar flavoured; it actually tasted like a liqueur chocolate.

So, while Homer was in Japan (of course, I took him along), he went off in search of fugu. Which he found in Shin-Sekai, in Osaka.

Marge: I'd like to see the Japanese take on the club sandwich!  I bet it's
       smaller and more efficient.

Today, I nearly smacked a few people upside the head in Starbucks. The place is packed, there were people who wanted to sit down and eat/ drink (like me), and some of the people in the seats were just sitting there (I guess they had finished their coffee), doing homework or gabbing with their companion. There's nothing wrong with doing that if it's quiet, but if they're not eating or drinking, why can't they vacate the seat for people who are?

I wonder if this happens in Starbuckses around the world. Maybe not in London, because (IIRC) you get charged extra if you want to eat in the store.

Today, I sampled some of the offerings in a Japanese Starbucks. They serve coffee jelly frappuccinos. The coffee jelly frappuccinos taste more or less like a regular frappuccino, except there's little chunks of coffee jelly in the drink. The coffee jelly can be a little difficult to suck up through a straw.

Since it's November, Starbucks is preparing for Christmas (can't they let us get over Halloween first?). Which means that the Christmas blend and some of the Christmas pastries are out. (I didn't check to see if there were eggnog lattes or peppermint mochas, though) Anyways, my favorite Christmas-related item is this thing called a Cranberry Bliss Bar. It's a gingerbread brownie -type of thing with cream cheese icing, topped with chopped dried cranberries. When I was in London a few years back, I ordered one there; it was a gingerbread cake topped with cream cheese icing and chopped dried cranberries. In Tokyo, it's a gingerbread brownie type of thing, but it tastes a bit different and I don't think that there's a cream cheese icing.

The Starbuckses in Japan also sell these really cool Thermoses - but they're 3,800 yen. Ouch.

Homer: No, mon, let's go home to Jamaica.  I and I been in Babylon too long.
PA:    Attention.  Flight 605 to Tokyo is ready for departure, and has four
       available mega-savers seats.
Marge: Come on, Homer!  Japan!
Homer: No, no Ja-pan, Ja-maica!  I want to pass the dutchie on the left-hand
       side!

Marge: Come on, Homer.  Japan will be fun!  You liked Rashomon.
Homer: That's not how I remember it.

Welcome to Japan, folks.  The local time is ... tomorrow.
-- Airplane announcement, "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo"

As part of my ongoing project to visit the places that the Simpsons have visited (still have to go to Ireland and Brazil), I decided to go to Japan. (The Simpsons went because they had the opportunity to snatch the trip away from the Flanderses.)

The flight was fairly forgettable, although I didn't have to put up with Jim Belushi and Pauly Shore making a movie on the plane. Instead, I finally got around to watching Run Fat Boy Run on my iPod. Run Fat Boy Run has the distinction of being the first marathon movie (that I've seen) that didn't totally stink. Yes, I am still traumatized by See How She Runs, even if it did have John Considine (he played evil millionaire Reginald Love on Another World in the 80s and is the second coolest soap opera villain. Wilhelmena Slater from Ugly Betty is the first). Simon Pegg and the guy who played his bestie Gordon were funny. And Hank Azaria (he does a number of voices on The Simpsons) does a good job playing a smug yuppie douchebag. I also managed to watch the season finale of Being Erica, so I now know what happened to Leo.

I got into Tokyo (via the Keisei Skyliner; didn't particularly feel like messing around with transferring to another train) after everything was closed, so I didn't get around to exploring the city until yesterday (Wednesday). After a leisurely walk to Ueno Park, I dropped by a couple of shrines (one Shinto, one Buddhist; I swear I go to church more when I'm on holiday) before heading to JR Ueno Station, where I jumped on the Yamanote line.

After visiting Tabata Station and the area around it, I jumped back on the train and went to Shinjuku (which I actually mixed up with Shibuya: d'OH!). As I was about to leave the station, I noticed that it was also a transfer point to the Sobu Line to Funabashi. The Funabashi Station that is near...DAISO. This is the largest store in the Daiso chain (71,000 square feet; the one at Aberdeen Centre in Richmond has 24,800 square feet.) and has 6 floors plus a basement floor.

I often refer to Daiso (at Aberdeen Centre) as the Japanese loonie store for loonie Japanese people, where I often see my evil, Elvis-hating coworker Lord Thingy in the Hello Kitty aisle. The Daiso store at Giga-Funabashi actually has a Hello Kitty section (looking at the packaging, I think that Sanrio won't let them sell licensed character goods outside of Japan). Needless to say, I went a little nuts. But I was still good and stayed within my budget, even though I was at Daiso and on vacation. Sadly, I was unable to find thse cool egg molds. I am sad.

After my pilgrimage to the largest Daiso store in the Daiso empire, I returned to Shinjuku, where I visited Takashimaya, the Kinokuniya bookstore (now I know where to go if I'm anxious about not having any English language reading material), and Tokyu Hands. There is a Yuzuwaya outlet on the 11th floor of Takashimaya, although I didn't buy anything there.

I took the subway back to my inn, and managed to get lost walking back. Actually, I walked right past the place and didn't realize it.

On to Day 2.

Did I ever mention that I really hate typing on this little keyboard?

We are having our branch Halloween party. Sadly, I don't have a costume, so I will probably have to dig my Harry Potter stuff out of the closet. Unfortunately, most of my HP stuff is unwearable, unless I'm outside at the REAL Hogwarts.

This scarf is about 3 mm thick and handknitted from Peruvian wool by house-elves. I only wear it when there's ice on the ground. I have a matching Hatmione. And I still have yarn in that colour, so maybe I should make some Hermittens, too.  (All I can say is that the Sorting Hat suggested Ravenclaw to Hermione, but she chose Gryffindor.)

...which is not a sequel to I, D'Oh!Bot. (That's the episode where Bart entered a battling robots contest, and Homer masqueraded as the robot.)

Today's Simpson's episode is a rerun (stupid World Series!), so I watched Battle of the Blades. Sadly, CBC has not seen fit to put Sanjaya on the show. Reality TV just isn't reality TV without Sanjaya. No one has rocked the ponyhawk yet, either.

There was some commentary about the remaining five couples from RandyPaulaSimon, uh, Dick Button and Sandra Bezic. I didn't bother watching it. It made my brain hurt. 

Yu-Na Kim (current world champion) will be skating on the results show, hopefully not to "Pauler" music or anything written by Krappy Kara.

Ken & Jodeyne (James Brown's "I Feel Good") - I have no idea who either of them are. They did a nice flippy thing at the end and she stuck the landing. The judges liked them.

Shae Lynn &  Claude (Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") - Shae Lynn looked like she stuck her finger in a light socket. A ponyhawk would have looked a lot better. Unfortunately, I was so busy mocking Shae Lynn's hair that I forgot to watch the program. Claude had a nice shirt on. The judges were relatively mehh. I think.

Marie-France & Stephane  (James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World") - Enjoyed it, although I thought it relied too heavily on the lifts. The judges enjoyed it, too.

Interesting bit where Paul Martini was showing the guys how to deal with a lift gone bad. 

Tuffy (Christine Hough) and Tie (don't know the song) - Okay. Relied too much on the lifts, too.  I like Tie Domi, though.

Jamie and Craig - I can't stand Jamie Sale (she and David have given me serious hypoglycemia from their syrupy skating over the years), so I hate anything that this team might do. I actually didn't watch them because I had to take a phone call during their program.

ETA: Ken and Jodeyne were eliminated. I still don't know who either of them are. Since the Simpsons are in reruns for the next 2 weeks, I will get to watch next week, too. 

I saw an article in the Globe and Mail about the Simpsons' 20th anniversary this year. Has it really been that long? Bart and Lisa should have moved out years ago!

And Marge is in this month's Playboy! I thought she hated Playdude, I mean Playboy. There was an episode where she trashed all of Homer's vintage Playdudes (Bart salvaged them and converted his tree house into the Playdude mansion).

Have you ever returned an item to a store for a refund after having used it?

No, but I had a cow-orker who did that all the time. She was constantly buying things at the mall (a couple of blocks from our office), wearing them once or twice, and then returning them. Some of the people in her work area told me that she did this so frequently, she was actually banned from at least one store in the mall.

I didn't believe that she did that until I went up to her work area one day to ask one of her colleagues something. Cow-orker had her back to me...and a tag was sticking out of the neck of her shirt.

That behaviour was tacky enough. What made it absolutely disgusting was that she had poor personal hygiene. (Which was probably why she was busted for return fraud and banned from the store.)