Convenience stores in Japan are definitely convenient. they are located everywhere, open 24 hours a day and normally have their shelves stocked with a wide variety of interesting and captivating products. You might be thinking, "What the hell is Kevin talking about? Convenience stores aren't interesting." In Japan however, they most certainly are!
A popular food throughout Japan is "onigiri." Essentially, onigiri is a rice ball. Many things can be added or mixed with the rice in order to enhance its flavour. The other day while stopping by a 7-11 convenience store close to work, I saw something interesting on the shelves. A kimchi-fried rice onigiri. I had to try it. It was basically a fusion of Korea (Kimchi), Chinese (cha-han or fired rice) and onigiri (Japanese rice ball).
You can find out more about my thoughts and reactions while eating the kimchi onigiri by watching my food review video!
The end of June is upon us and summer is here. It is officially rainy season I Japan, but to be honest, it rains about the same amount as I recall from growing up on the East Coast of Canada. Rainy Season in Japan basically means that it rains once or twice a week. Nothing remarkable at all!
One thing that is remarkable however is the fact that Team Japan "Samurai Blue" beat Denmark early this morning 3-1 and secured a spot in the final 16 at the World Cup in South Africa. As of this morning, Japan is no officially the Land of the Fairweather Fan! Two weeks ago, you'd be hard pressed to find any one in Japan who cared about Team Japan or had anything good to say about them at all. Most folks here were simply dismissing them without a thought! That has now of course changes and I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to buy an official Team Japan jersey in any sports shop.
Keisuke Honda has emerged as a star player for Team Japan. This cat is going to make boat loads of endorsement cash and deservedly so.
In other news, I am going to be a father any day now. This is a stressful time of course and any first time parent will agree that that is a natural thing. I suppose that if I wasn't nervous, something would be odd! Although I realize I haven't been especially dedicated to keeping this blog current, I may take an even more dramatic lapse from online life once the little one is here. I plan to post a video later on the weekend on You Tube, but aside from that, I think my online habits will change.
In completely other news, I thought the recent allegations on CBC news from the director of CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) were pretty interesting. he claims that the Chinese government (spy agencies) have direct influence over a number of Canadian politicians on a municiple and provncial level. These allegations have of course enraged the Chinese community, but it gets more spy thriller-like when several well known security and intelligence analysts say that these are not allegations, but very true things!
For all of you out there who are not on any sort of vacation,let me first begin this post by apologizing. I am now officially on vacation and started the whole thing by going to work this morning. What? That's just plain stupid Kevin! Yes...I realize that, but I had to tie up a few loose ends I left on Friday. By 11:00am I was on my way to downtown Kobe and, more specifically, Chinatown.
I simply love little outings to Chinatown. Whether with my wife or by myself, a chance to sneak off to Chinatown for some great street food always puts a smile on my face. Kobe's Chinatown is known as Nankinmachi and is located in the Motomachi area of downtown. STreet food is plentiful and affordable; a great combination.
At lunchtime today, I went there for something called Guo Bao. In a nutshell,Guo Bao is a steamed bread and sweet pork sandwich. I've read about it online and some folks refer to it as a Taiwanese pork sandwich. Here's what the little beauties looked like. They were 400yen each at this shop, but I bought mine for 200yen at another shop further down the street.
Good stuff.
I of course took the time to make a short video blog about the occasion.
I'm tossing around the idea of doing a more frequent food based vlog. Of course my BusanKevin channel is all over the place, but I'd like to do more food-type vlogs.
Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. From what I gather, aside from a parade in Tokyo yesterday, it's not really much of an event here. I'm sure at the local foreigner pubs, there will be a lot of folks, but I'll celebrate at home with a can or two of Guiness.
Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!
I'll be off to Korea on Wednesday morning so I promise to take a lot of cool footage and post some entertaining vlogs on my You Tube Channel.
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