Japanese Golden Week ゴールデンウィーク

It's been a year since I first came to Japan. I arrived here last year, a few days before Golden Week ゴールデンウィーク and Japanese Golden Week begins yet again, today. That's right, it's vacation time. Eight full days away from class. It's a time to relax, sleep late, consume malt beverages and study some Nihongo and other things.

Here a video I made about my one year anniversary in Japan:
A Year in Japan



A piece of randomness:

I was looking from a free Kansai weekly paper and saw this. Actually my wife spotted it and pointed it out to me. Not the best selling point for a house I think!


I was in KALDI on Sunday looking for some peanut butter when my wife's keen eye noticed this. By the way, KALDI is a coffee shop that sells loads of foreign food items. There's one located in Motomachi in Kobe (close to Chinatown). So, I picked up a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter and this wine.

It's Sakura Wine. That's right, cherry blossom wine. There were actual cherry blossoms at the bottom. We tried it last night with dinner and both didn't like it. It was far too sweet. It actually tasted like liquid candy. I've never been a fan of sweet wines, but this one reminded me of bubblegum in a bottle...with flowers.


You can see the two cherry blossoms up close. Seemed like a great novelty item!


Ume Tonkatsu!

Just before we purchased the wine, we stopped for lunch in a small restaurant in Motomachi. They had some great eats for low prices. I tried the Ume(plum) Tonkatsu. It was basically deep fried pork cutlet covered with salty plum sauce. It was really crispy (how i prefer my tonkatsu) and the sauce added a very interesting and enjoyable flavour. This was a definite treat for me! The meal also came with a bowl of steamed rice and udon soup.

Japanese lunch boxes 弁当

I'm pretty sure this past weekend will be the last Hanami for me. I'm now working 6 days a week and up to my eyeballs in work since the new school year just began. I cannot blog or You Tube as much as I normally do, but I still try to squeeze in a bit of "geek" time when I can!

Yesterday I went to the Mukogawa with my wife. It is one of the last weekends (if not THE last) with intact cherry blossoms. We had a great picnic. We bought obentos (lunchboxes) at Hanshin Department in Kobe. These ones were true "gourmet" lunch boxes, unlike the ones you can normally get at a convenience store!



This is what my wife's lunch looked like. It was heavy on the seafood.


Here was mine. It was a "gourmet" tonkatsu or breaded pork cutlet.


The inside of the pork cutlet (very lean white meat) had asparagus and cheese. It was AMAZING! The shop we got it from was KYK in Hanshin Department Store.



Just thought this Coke Zero ad interesting. "Wild Health!" This is Okinawan j-pop singer Namie Amuro and she is indeed impressive!



Here's my most recent You Tube endeavour. I was working on this collaboration video for a few weeks.
A Trip Around the World