2024-09-01

A coworker recently asked me about culture shocks and I didn’t have a great answer, so maybe here’s some things that aren’t quite shocks, but little things that do remind me “hey I’m in Japan”:

• A grocery chain, Maruetsu, always has roasted sweet potatoes being kept warm near the entrance, with a sign telling you when they were roasted.
• ACG feels much more normalized than in the US. Running into a random Genshin Impact promo with a bunch of cosplayers is just normal (ok admittedly, I was in Ikebukuro and wandering around Otome Road), as is Hatsune Miku advertising sports drinks on a vending machine. (Unfortunately, sus Blue Archive video ads in the subway are normal, too.)
• I can’t find cauliflower. Only frozen cauliflower rice.
• A dozen eggs is 10, and they typically come in a plastic carton that’s taped shut, so once you remove the tape the carton doesn’t stay closed.

2024-09-08

Via Pixivision: a cute yuri oneshot, 将来を約束した幼馴染を10年待ち続けたらこうなった, also by nmi.

2024-09-13

I finally found cauliflower: Gyomu Super had frozen florets. (This grocery chain is somewhat catered towards bulk/business purchases, from what I understand, sorta like a very mini Costco. They tend to stock international items as well.) And Gyomu also had tortilla chips, though I did not get those, but I did get baited by frozen hash browns.

2024-09-14

A friend invited me to go get daigakuimo (大学芋) with them, which I hadn’t tried before. These are candied sweet potatoes. Supposedly the name is because they were cheap and hence popular with university students back in the day:

Because sweet potatoes were filling and cheap, they became a popular snack at universities in Tokyo during the early 1900s. Until today, Daigaku Imo is still popular and can be found at many food stands and school festivals during the fall season.

I got two kinds: chunks of sweet potato covered in honey and black sesame, and crispy chips also covered in honey. The chips are quite addictive; the chunks are good, but a little too rich for my taste (maybe a little less or no honey would be better…).

2024-09-15

The nice part of a walkable city is stumbling on completely random things just as part of your daily life. Last night I managed to find a popup selling Taiwanese pineapple cakes on the Yūrakuchō station platform, and today I ran across a popup selling merchandise for The Apothecary Diaries in Tokyo Station. I managed to get a set of Maomao stickers!

2024-09-16

Vanguard seems to think Firefox Nightly is a bot, as now I can only log in via Safari…