tweets: random thoughts for 2024 July

Just random thoughts that would be tweets, except I don’t use Twitter.

2024-07-06 (Saturday)

Costco Japan: not as good as Costco US. There, I said it.

The Costco in Madison Heights, MI was a great blend of American, Chinese, Korean, and Middle Eastern influences. You want an entire halal lamb? Sure. Grab a bag of Taiwanese pineapple cakes, a giant tub of kimchi, and a case of beer while you’re at it. Best of all, there won’t be Instgram influencers gushing over all the ~ethnic~ products.

Costco in Tokyo is some American products, some scaled up Japanese products, and not much else. We couldn’t even find tortilla chips! Being able to buy a huge sushi platter for pretty cheap was nice, but there’s takeout sushi everywhere. I dunno, the nice thing about Costco wasn’t primarily getting bigger portions of regular grocery store stuff, but also about getting big portions of whatever the local populace happened to want—and I suppose the US is just going to be more diverse there.

One place where they are the same: produce sucks. The portions are huge, but the prices aren’t much of a savings (if at all), and the quality is iffy.

2024-07-08 (Monday)

Yogurt here: 400g (about 14oz), 3.8% fat, 229¥ tax included (about $1.50 as of this writing). So about 2.7g/¢.

Yogurt back home: Cabot full-fat Greek yogurt is 2lbs (about 900g) 10% fat, $5.99. So about 1.5g/¢.

Given that dairy is relatively expensive over here, the nearly 50% discount is impressive (of course, purchasing power is lower here too). On the other hand, the Cabot yogurt is more than twice as dense going by the fat content, so the US yogurt is still a better deal to me! (Again, not accounting for purchasing power.)

Also, I think the Japanese yogurt just tastes like milky water. I probably need to try some other brands, but it really has nothing on the richness of the Cabot.

2024-07-13 (Saturday)

Lots of people write about the Ameyoko Underground Market, but nobody actually says how to find it. It’s not on Google Maps.

Well, it’s the basement of the Ameyoko Center Building specifically, not any of the other buildings. Find that, and there’ll be an obvious staircase to go down. (Again, not sure why people say it’s hard to find; as long as you’re in the right building, it’s incredibly obvious.)

Contrary to online reports there was not much fresh fruit. There was quite a bit of meat: lots of cuts of beef and pork, like you would be used to at an Asian-American grocery (HMart, your local Chinese grocer, etc.). The aboveground stalls had fresh fruit, but mostly nothing exotic (we spotted lychees and papaya, along with the usual seasonal fruit like cherries and peaches, but were hoping for things like mangosteen). I was also disappointed that we couldn’t find Thai basil.

The CLAMP exhibition at the National Art Center, Tokyo was just alright. It’s a dumb thing to grouse about, but there were just too many people: we had to wait an hour in line just to get in, and there were so many people inside that you couldn’t get up close to the art without waiting in more lines. Even the merchandise shop had a line to get in and was so crowded you could barely look at things! Also, I realized I wasn’t even familiar with most of CLAMP’s oeuvre in the first place.

Finally, I think the biggest disappointment was that there wasn’t much depth to the exhibition. It would have been great to see behind-the-scenes things like early drafts, insight into the creative process, rejected sketches, etc. Of course, artists rightly wouldn’t want to release that…so that might be too much to expect. But paying ¥2100 to basically look at blown up manga pages didn’t really feel worth it. Even some basic background about the process would have been interesting, like why so many of their colored pages used copics (according to my brother, this is just standard so maybe too obvious?) but Chobits seemed to rely on gouache instead. (Was there an effect they were going for? Did they just feel like it?)

Possibly all this was in the audio guide and I just missed it, of course.

It was gratifying to see an errata notice at the start noting that fans had tracked down some missing information and corrected some mistakes in the exhibition labels.

Gong Cha, an international boba chain, has a line of bottled milk teas in 7-Eleven stores here now. I tried the tea and it was surprisingly close to the actual tea in my opinion, and was only 160 yen for a small bottle. More expensive than the “normal” milk tea, but more flavor too.

2024-07-14 (Sunday)

I noticed the park had an outdoor kiddie pool. The name? しゃぶしゃぶ池. Or in other words, Hot Pot Pond.

I tried the China Sichuan Food Spicy Peanuts recipe, but (1) I think freezing the peanuts made the texture significantly worse, (2) soaking and peeling the peanuts is a giant pain that isn’t worth it, (3) I really need some chili powder to make it spicy enough.

2024-07-17 (Wednesday)

I attended the 少女と少女 (Girl_Girl) exhibition in Kichijoji! I got to see one of my favorite mangaka in person and she was so kind as to sign my copy of her book for me. The gallery itself was very cramped, just a single room. I sorta wanted some of the art prints, but I wouldn’t know what to do with them…

There is a custom among fan communities of giving small gifts called sashiire (差し入れ), which are generally just small snacks or drinks to show appreciation, so I brought one along with a fan letter. Hopefully Yatosaki-sensei likes it!

Inokashira Park in Kichijoji, unlike all the other parks I’ve seen here, actually has quite a few benches to sit on!

2024-07-19 (Friday)

<sarcasm>Sundar Pichai is actually suppressing my vote</sarcasm>.

Expats can vote by requesting a ballot be sent to them; in my case I was able to submit the request online. However, the replies to my email were all sent straight to spam by Gmail, which I didn’t notice until a few weeks later. While I eventually got my ballot and mailed it out, now it’s possible it’ll be too late to make the primary election.

In other words: Gmail, by sending these emails straight to spam, helped delay my ballot just enough that it might not count. Suspicious?

There are multiple ways you can buy Shinkansen tickets online. However, it turns out that prepaid debit cards (the only thing I can get right now that resembles a credit card) often explicitly block or are blocked by these sites, for some reason. For example, my dカード says the following are disallowed:

換金性の高い商品のご購入に関するお支払い

  • 新幹線のチケットや貴金属など、換金性の高い商品のお取引。
  • オンラインカジノなどのお取引。
  • 株式・債権・外貨・仮想通貨の購入、投資信託などの金融商品の決済にかかるお取引。
  • 海外加盟店における外国為替取引（FX）などのお取引。

Payment for purchases of cash equivalent items of high value

  • Shinkansen tickets and precious metals, or transactions for cash equivalents of high value
  • Online casinos
  • Stocks, credit, FX, cryptocurrency, investment trusts, or other financial instruments
  • FX at foreign merchants

I don’t get it. It’s a prepaid card, so it’s my money. What’s wrong with buying a train ticket!?

FamilyMart has these frozen frappés, which you buy, then you take them to the coffee machine, put it in, and press the button to make them. The “afternoon tea” one was merely okay; maybe this was intentional, but it didn’t fully melt so it was more like a slush? I wish the tea flavor came through a bit more strongly, too.

2024-07-20 (Saturday)

I attended the Genshin Impact exhibition being held by the Ikebukuro Animate. This one was fortunately not very crowded, due to requiring advance tickets and timed entry, but it was also not very interesting. The displays were all printouts of game art, this time with zero exposition at all—again, I would have loved to see concept art or the designers’ thoughts, or the real-world reference points.

2024-07-21 (Sunday)

Thanks to a last-minute invitation from some friends, I ended up hiking Mount Ontake, supposedly the easiest 3000m peak in Japan. It was really quite doable, though I really need to bring a reasonable amount of food instead of doing everything on an empty stomach.

The way back was a pain, though, since they randomly closed a stretch of the highway, adding about an hour to the trip. Worse, we were about out of gas, so it was rather painful to just sit there and wonder if/when the last bar on the meter was going to fade away. (Thankfully, we made it.)

2024-07-24 (Wednesday)

Having tried most/all of the FamilyMart frappé flavors now, I can conclude they’re not really for me, unfortunately, though I like the idea. Time to check out 7-Eleven smoothies next.

wacci’s Wasuretai recently released and is a sweet little song about breakup:

あなたの声を忘れない I’d like to forget your voice あなたのキスを忘れない I’d like to forget your kiss あなたの夢を聞けた日の I’d like to forget your tears あなたの涙忘れない On that day you told me your dreams あなたのことがまだ好きで I’m still in love with you あなたのことでいっぱいで And you’re still all around me だからこそもう終わりにしよう So I need to forget you all the more 燃え尽きる前に Before I burn away