Taiyō no Tomato

I don't always eat ramen, but when I do, I eat tomato ramen.

To be perfectly clear, I almost never eat ramen. It's heavy, salty and oily, and I'm still detoxing from eight years of living in Setagaya near a particularly ramen-heavy stretch of Kannana Street. I make an exception, however, for the ramen at Taiyō no Tomato. 

Pictured here: Tomato cheese ramen set "A"

Taiyō no Tomato (meaning "Tomato of the Sun") is a Kanto-area chain of restaurants specializing in ramen that ditches the typical Japanese soup (salt, miso, soy sauce, pork bone, etc.) and throws in Western elements like tomato soup, eggplant, cheese and basil. As East-meets-West fusions go, it's pretty good. Recently the chain has grown overseas to include locations in Taipei and Hong Kong.

Let me tell you a few things about eating at Taiyō no Tomato:

1. It's kind of like the print-club section of the game center: Be ready to feel weird if you go stag. The Shinjuku MyLord location is pretty much always populated with 90% women and 10% couples. Every time I visit on my own, I'm the only man seated alone. Apparently tomato ramen isn't a very macho food.
2. You will, with absolute certainty, burn your mouth on the stuff. Hot ramen plus molten cheese equals delicious nerve damage to the inside of your mouth.
3. Get the cheese gyoza (pictured at right in the photo above). Your heart will frown in disapproval at all the cholesterol, but your stomach will look up at you as if in a trance and say, "thank you sir may I have another."
4. As dictated by Taiyō no Tomato's cultural norms, save the rice that comes with your ramen. After you've eaten the noodles, spoon the remaining soup onto the rice to form a hidden dish: risotto.

Video: Dodecamin Great

Many apologies for the long stretch with no updates. My blogging capacity has been temporarily undermined by the recent decision Wife and I made to [gulp] buy a house. We'll be moving to nearby Saitama, best known for being dasai (uncool) next spring.

I did, however, find time to make this video about Energy Drink Dodecamin Great, the product of a collaboration between Capcom, publisher of the Monster Hunter game series, and Asahi Beverage. Give it a look-see. You might even learn something.

Novelty Drink Round-Up

Another June, another goofy Pepsi product. Plus, some of the worst ramune drinks I could find. Watch the video.

It's That Time of Year Again

In Japan, one can always easily spot the signs of the changing seasons. You can tell spring is coming when the plum blossoms open. You can be certain spring is over when the humidity leaps dramatically and it rains every other day for a month. And you can tell that summer is on its way when a particularly unappetizing new flavor of Pepsi comes out.

Chorus, Isolate, Confirm has made a yearly tradition of blowing the lid -- or the cap -- off these bizarre concoctions. It's the closest I ever come to being an "investigative journalist." I'm your Pepsi correspondent in the field.

Last year it was Pepsi Blue Hawaii (do not mix with other cleaning agents), and the year before that it was Pepsi Ice Cucumber (for external use only). This year Pepsi continues its dynasty of beverage terror with Pepsi Shiso.

Shiso is the Japanese name for perilla, a plant normally used as a garnish for pasta or salad (and not normally used as a flavor for a carbonated drink). Like fennel and cilantro, perilla is one of those plants that doesn't necessarily taste like something that's meant to be eaten. For me, the taste of perilla brings back an ancient memory of being two years old and eating a leaf from a random plant in the backyard, just to see what would happen. As such, Pepsi Shiso sounds on paper like a flavor disaster waiting to happen...an inevitable failure that might as well be called Grass Cola.

It sounds marginally better than, say, teriyaki birthday cake or caramel-dipped charcoal briquettes.

Now for the surprising part: In practice, Pepsi Shiso isn't that bad. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's the best limited-release Pepsi flavor I've tried so far. The shiso flavor keeps it from being too sweet, which is exactly what last year's Blue Hawaii had going against it. This blows Pepsi Blue Hawaii out of the toilet bowl, and it makes Pepsi Ice Cucumber look like Asparagus Banana Ketchup Sprite.

Does that mean I'll be buying any more of the stuff before it disappears from store shelves? No. In fact, in keeping with tradition, I'm unlikely to even finish the one bottle that I did buy.

I Now Pronounce You Bruddah and Wahine

Wife and I got back from our Hawaiian wedding/honeymoon trip on Wednesday night. It was altogether an excellent vacation; somehow we managed to strike a balance between the busy madness of a wedding and the relaxation requisite of a week in Hawaii. Neither of us caught a cold on the plane, lost any luggage, got bitten by a shark or came back with crippling sunburn. All in all, not a bad little excursion.

Of course, while things went well overall, there were a few little things that could have been better. I've decided to highlight a few of the businesses we patronized during (and in preparation for) our trip and the experiences we had therewith, both good and bad.

The Willows [link]

We had a lunch reception at this restaurant, not far from Central Union Church, our ceremonial venue. Despite choosing the place based mainly on accessibility and affordability, the buffet food turned out to be quite good, and the staff were as helpful as could be. On top of that, this restaurant's macadamia nut pie was the single best desert item I ate during the entire trip. I think our wedding cake may have actually been a little jealous.

Ciao Mein [link]

While I'm pretty sure the founder of this much-hyped (and much-dimly-lit) restaurant came up with the idea of marrying Chinese and Italian food specifically as a vehicle for the clever name "Ciao Mein," the food we ate here was surprisingly good, if a bit too expensive. We ate a big dinner of breaded soft-shell crabs, shrimp with walnuts and peapods, and seafood lasagna with look-funn noodles (pictured below. It may not look much like lasagna, but the noodles certainly do look-funn, don't they? .....sorry). The service was also excellent. Our waiter spoke fluent English and Japanese...and for some reason, responded to everything we said with a burst of good-natured laughter. At least, I want to believe it was good natured.

Dollar Rent-a-Car [link]

I don't have too much experience with car rental companies, but none of my past experiences have been as cumbersome as our experience with Dollar was. Things were screwy from the very beginning. For example, when we failed to pick up our rental on the day of our reservation (what kind of rent-a-car office closes for the day at 2PM?), Dollar stopped expecting us to show up at all. The next day when we tried to pick up the compact, the eccentric lady at the desk told us our reservation was "deleted," and that all they had available were Jeeps and convertibles.

She eventually did give us a discount on a convertible for our trouble, but it took her something like 25 minutes of her typing and growling at her computer and complaining about the "new software system" before our rental was finalized. When we finally got the car it had, annoyingly, half a tank of gas in it. This challenged us to the guessing game of returning the car with the very same amount of gas in it, since the rates Dollar charged for missing gas were a good amount higher than the actual price.

(Unrelated to our experience with Dollar, have you ever driven in Honolulu? What an epic pain in the neck. How many one-way streets does one city need? That, combined with high price of parking, the trouble we had with Dollar and the availability of decent, affordable public transport, made me somewhat regret my decision to rent a car at all.)

Howard's Downtown Florist [link]

As the groom, my responsibilities were few in the planning of our wedding. One thing I did take responsibility for was the reservation and pickup of the flowers and petals used in our ceremony. Luckily I happened to find this idiot-proof (groom-proof) flower shop. The staff was very helpful on the phone, although he occasionally sounded surprised -- or maybe offended -- at my ignorance to the world of bridal bouquets.

Atlantis Submarines Oahu [link]

Kind of lame, I'm sorry to say. This submarine, touted as the biggest sightseeing sub in the world, goes 100 feet under the ocean to offer guests a close-up view of some artificial reefs and shipwrecks, along with the animals that inhabit them. Unfortunately, however, buying the pricey ticket to ride the sub doesn't guarantee that you'll actually see anything interesting. Sure, there were a couple of turtles and some fish here and there. But even when they do show up, at a depth of 100 feet with only natural lighting, every fish you see looks blue or black, no matter how colorful it actually is. This is a nice attraction for people who can't go snorkeling or diving...but if you're not one of those people, you're better off spending the afternoon at Hanauma Bay.

Hawaiian Bridal [link]

I won't mince words: Wedding planners will gleefully destroy your finances if you let them, and this truth is amplified when it comes to Japanese wedding planners. That's not just my jaded prejudice talking; many businesses in Japan make their money by offering a high level of service and convenience in exchange for every last yen you've got. Luckily for us, however, the hefty price tag on our wedding was (at least partially) justified by the astonishing work of wedding photographer Tomo, who also happens to be the president of Hawaiian Bridal. Tomo shot us at various locations on the day of our ceremony, including a sunset photo shoot at Ala Moana Park, and gave us all the photo data afterward -- almost 2000 pictures in all. It made for an exhausting day, but the results were very nice:

New! Toilet Bowl Pepsi

We trade one disaster for another.

This week in 2007, Pepsi unleashed its Japan-only Ice Cucumber flavor on the populace. It looked like mouthwash and tasted like toothpaste. This year the gimmick is Pepsi Blue Hawaii, a carbonated drink which looks like Windex and tastes like a melted snow cone.

According to the label, the too-sweet-for-humanity flavor of this soft drink is achieved via the synergy of pineapple and lemon. But after drinking it, the only synergy happening in my body seems to be that of tooth decay and diabetes. My breath is attracting ants.

I bought this at the same convenience store where I found the Ice Cucumber Pepsi last summer. And, same as last year, I'm pretty sure the only people buying the stuff are bloggers who want to make fun of it.

Continued Intrigue in the JT Gyoza Scandal

The scrutiny I wanted Japan Tobacco to undergo following their poisonous gyoza screw-up has all but materialized.

News outlets reported Saturday that, just prior to the public announcement that tainted gyoza had been sold, JT's stock dropped dramatically due to a sudden leap in sell volume. This suspicious 8% drop in stock price has, in turn, sparked suspicions of insider trading among shareholders who knew bad news was about to be made public.

I really wish I could look at this revelation as good news, but there's a major problem: The Japanese government, whose job it is to investigate this kind of unsavory business, happens to own 50% of Japan Tobacco. Would it be silly of me to expect someone to do a criminal investigation of himself...and do it well?

Yes, I guess so.

So rather than the satisfaction I might have gotten from knowing that JT's corruption would be appropriately punished, I am left with an increased feeling of agitation when I hear nationalist knuckleheads badmouthing China for producing some gyoza that made a handful of people sick. If those people really feel their safety has been compromised, I cordially invite them to cut back on the gyoza and shut the hell up. Meanwhile, here we are standing around like fools waiting for our leaders to investigate themselves for criminal negligence and unethical business practices.

Man, are we stupid.

Japan Tobacco Wants Us All Dead

Many thanks to all those who offered guidance on my iPod replacement adventure. I will consider every option (even those goofy music player shoes from outer space).

My daily musical goings-on have been superseded by the far more pressing issue of DEATH GYOZA! This week saw dozens of "claimers" (corrupted English for people of a litigious nature) who stood up and said, "me too" after some imported Chinese gyoza dumplings were reported to have been the cause of unconsciousness in some Japanese kids. Apparently, these pesticide-flavored gyoza are very popular in elementary school lunchrooms...and kids, as we all know, come runnin' for the taste of pesticide.

The Japanese press has gone out of their way to let you know that these gyoza came from China. Incredibly, the incident seems to have reinstated China as the #1 perceived threat to Japanese people, a position long occupied by North Korea. What gets some (although not enough) attention is the fact that the domestic distributor of this tainted food is none other than Japan Tobacco, whose slogan is "JT: The Delight Factory." From now on, however, JT's slogan in my mind will be "JT: The Narcotic Gyoza Factory."

Japan Tobacco has bothered me for a long time now. Ignoring the fact that they're an inherently evil cigarette giant, they grab my annoyed attention every day with their inane TV ads. They have ads with U2 playing in the background (somebody call Bono) bragging about how JT is contributing to scientific progress. They put ads on the train admonishing people who don't practice "good manners" when they smoke. Oh, and by the way, their top seller is a happy little product called "Delight." Buncha clowns.

The good news is that, with all the media coverage and repeated airings of the list of products consumers who don't like the tangy zip of pesticide should avoid, JT Foods will have to be more careful about their importing practices, lest people see that the Delight Factory is also the Unconsciousness, Nausea and Vomiting Factory.

Suddenly I'm hungry for gyoza.

New! Toothpaste Pepsi

Two days ago, Pepsi (via Japan bottler Suntory Beverage) released something called Pepsi Ice Cucumber. Japanese retail locations are throwing a spotlight on this ill-looking, vaguely minty green soft drink which, in my opinion, tastes a lot like toothpaste.

When I bought a bottle of the sea-green tonic at the 7-Eleven near my apartment today, I asked the cashier if the stuff was selling well. He said it was, despite the fact that the shelf from which I took the bottle was perfectly stocked without a single empty spot. Based on the recommendation of a co-worker who tried Pepsi Ice Cucumber before I did and suffered subsequent stomach discomfort, I took a single drink from the bottle and then put the rest in the refrigerator. The bottle is likely to stay there until the stuff ferments and becomes Pepsi Sea Foam Green Moonshine.

Technorati: Pepsi Ice Cucumber

An-Tastic

Not counting the Virginia Tech shootings, the death of Boris Yeltsin, the shooting of Nagasaki's governor by a jilted yakuza, the firing of Don Imus, the discovery of "Super-Earth" and a day-long police standoff in Machida (which happened on a day when I happened to be teaching in Machida), it's been a slow news month.

Until now, that is.

Japanese Wendy's restaurants have unveiled something that should have remained veiled: A sweet bean burger. Called the "Anburger" (using the Japanese word "an" which means "sweet bean paste"), this culinary monstrosity defies food logic with its unholy trinity of sweet red beans, cheese and -- dear God, is that mayonnaise?

Something I learned very early in my Japan experience was that I don't care for anything an. It's a shame because the sticky purple paste, sometimes called azuki, is a staple ingredient in traditional Japanese sweets. It's everywhere. You can find it in donuts, cookies, pastries and cake. And burgers.

To make an already unusual story even more so, when I first saw the advertisement for the Anburger, I misread it. In the image above, the purple heading says "ANBURGER" and beneath that it says, "Oniku no kawari ni AN wo iretemimashita" (translation: "We tried using AN instead of meat"). But because of the font used in the ad, the word an very much looks like the word are, which means "that." In the sentence beneath the heading, the word an is in Japanese quotation marks to give it emphasis...but when you put emphasis on the word are, it sounds like a euphemism for something nasty or dirty or sexual. So the sentence could be misread as "We tried using you-know-what instead of meat."

Technorati: anburger

First Kitchen Delivers Us From Egg

Japanese fast food trafficker First Kitchen has baffled the world by adding to its menu hamburgers that doesn't contain bacon or egg.

Until now, eating at First Kitchen has been a frustrating experience for people who don't like egg or bacon on their hamburger. I've lived in Japan for more than three and a half years, and I've spent that entire time avoiding First Kitchen's bacon egg burger. I don't believe a hamburger should contain such breakfast-like ingredients. Similar beliefs have stopped me from ever touching a McGriddle. I don't even like saying the word "McGriddle," or typing it for that matter. I'll never type it again.

So now First Kitchen's menu includes a "beef lettuce burger" and an "FK burger." I tried the beef lettuce burger today and found it remarkably egg-free, yet amazingly unremarkable. I don't have any real interest in trying the FK burger, but I am glad they decided on the abbreviation "FK" over the alternative: Japanese youngsters often refer to First Kitchen with the affectionate nickname "Fakkin," knowing full well that it sounds an awful lot like the English word "fucking." I can imagine throngs of customers lining up and placing orders for the "fucking burger set, onegaishimasu."

Technorati: bacon / egg / burger

The Oronamin Experiment: Day 4

The final chapter in the Oronamin saga: Oronamin C plus Kirin Draft Beer. Perhaps conceived as a way of making beer more palateable to females, Oronamin Beer tastes like -- hold onto your hats, people -- beer, except sweeter. But it didn't make beer any more palateable to Girlfriend, who took a sip and made a face like a frog. I mean a really disgusted, contemptuous frog.

I didn't learn much of anything from The Oronamin Experiment, I'm sorry to say. The whole thing did, however, go a long way to strengthen my earlier assertion that food brand websites provide no meaningful content to consumers.

Perhaps the most important thing I gained from the Experiment was an amusing warm-up topic for my English lessons this week. Walking into the classroom without even a remotely interesting topic to get the students into "English mode" can make a 40-minute lesson feel longer than a visit to Hell's DMV.

The Oronamin Experiment: Day 3

Today the excitement (?) of the Oronamin Experiment flagged a few degrees, as I added a scoop of vanilla ice cream to a glass of Oronamin C, creating the least objectionable results in the Experiment so far. Still, as I sampled the Oronamin Float, all I could think was, "I wish this ice cream didn't taste like grape juice and Mountain Dew." Girlfriend took a drink and declared that this was the best combination yet, but both of us agreed, like yesterday, that there was no need to drink any more. So the Oronamin Float, like its predecessors, ended up dumped down the kitchen sink.

I didn't bother to take a picture of the resulting drink this time. Just imagine a yellow ice cream float, and you get the general idea. Tomorrow is the final installment of the Experiment, and arguably the most unlikely combination of them all: Oronamin Beer!

The Oronamin Experiment: Day 2

This was the part of the Experiment I least wanted to do: Oronamin C mixed with a raw egg yolk, to form the so-called Oronamin Shake. I'm not a big fan of eggs in general, especially liquid ones. Like it or not, however, life in Japan entails the occasional consumption of raw eggs*, whether they occur in sukiyaki or gyuudon. Or in an Oronamin Shake.

Stirring egg yolk into a glass of Oronamin C produces a yellow drink with the consistency of slightly diluted egg nog. But it doesn't taste like egg nog and it doesn't get you drunk, so what's the point? I tasted it once and decided I didn't need to taste it again. It wasn't particularly bad, and it was a lot more flavorful than last night's Oronamin Milk, but it was still just a sugary soft drink with egg in it. Sounds worse than it is, but isn't that good, either.

Girlfriend took a sip, made a funny face and then agreed with my assessment: oshikunai but not mazui.

[Oronamin C] + [raw egg yolk] = "Meh."

* Do not attempt the Oronamin Shake if you live in the US, or any country whose food safety regulations are similarly lax.

The Oronamin Experiment: Day 1

A discussion with one of my students about last week's experience with the Final Fantasy XII Potion led to a discussion of other Japanese products that tout themselves as genki drinks (where the meaning of genki is unclear, but probably has something to do with "bringing healthiness for your happy life"). One of the most popular of those "little brown bottle" drinks is Oronamin C, a carbonated, vitamin-enriched mixture that looks and tastes something like Mountain Dew plus grape. It's not as heavy on the behavior-altering chemicals as some of the other genki drinks out there, which makes Oronamin C popular with kids and adults alike.

My student pointed out to me that the official Oronamin C Website has a page of recommended "oishii recipes" involving the drink: Oronamin Milk, Oronamin Shake, Oronamin Float and Oronamin Beer. Based on this fascinating find, my student made an excellent suggestion: To try each of these recipes and write about them on my blog.

Starting today, I will try one Oronamin recipe a day until I've done all four, or my stomach explodes, whichever happens first. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Day 1 of the Oronamin Experiment is Oronamin Milk. Of the four recipes suggested, Oronamin Milk was seemed to be the most probable according to other students I asked. Some of them even told me they had tried it themselves. I, however, wasn't completely sold on the idea of mixing milk with a carbonated soft drink. It seemed wrong, in the same way that hating kittens is wrong.

Still, I dutifully followed the website's instructions, mixing equal parts milk and Oronamin C, yielding a result that looked mostly like yellowish milk. The amazing thing is that the two flavors seemed to cancel each other out completely. Oronamin C is apparently the olfactory opposite of non-fat milk, because their combination in equal parts had almost no flavor whatsoever. Amazing! To put it in quantitative terms:

[Oronamin C] + [non-fat milk] = 0

I'd like to point out, additionally, that the Oronamin C website also suggests slowly adding milk to a glass of Oronamin C with ice. The two are then supposed to separate, resulting in a layered mixture you can drink creatively by adjusting the depth of your straw to "achieve new flavors!" Please excuse me while I do anything but that. As if I didn't already feel that Oronamin C and milk go together like oil and water.

Tomorrow: The dreaded Oronamin Shake (hint: does not involve ice cream)!

Potion Update

So, after I typed the previous post, I left the apartment to have lunch and go to work. Around 2:00 the second wave of the Final Fantasy XII Potion's caffeine buzz took hold and I started to feel downright strange. My arms got twitchy and the width of my stride seemed to extend itself beyond my control. My first students of the day were treated to what, in retrospect, must have been a rather strange lesson. I stuttered, tapped my feet and bit my lip the whole time. And around 4:00 I crashed hard, as expected, suddenly feeling the urge to take a nap. By 6:30 I was pretty much back to normal.

After carefully evaluating my experience, I have decided that I cannot recommend the Final Fantasy XII Potion for human consumption.

50 Hit Points for 200 Yen

March 16 is the release date for Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII, the latest installment in one of the most hard-to-kill video game franchises in history. In anticipation of said release, Square Enix has enlisted the help of beverage giant Suntory, who is currently selling a promotional tie-in item called Final Fantasy XII Potion.

Needless to say, I had to run to the convenience store and pick up a bottle of this so-called Potion. The clear, 120 mL drink is sold in an attractive blue bottle with a label that seems to scream, DRINK ME. But I became suspicious when I found the Potion shelved with "health drinks" like Arinamin and Yunker...such drinks are popular for on-the-go business types in Japan, but they are loaded with caffeine and they usually taste like Robitussen. Determined to be "investigative" in my "reporting," however, I twisted off the cap and drank the thing a few minutes before typing this entry.

In accordance with my suspicions, the Final Fantasy XII Potion tasted awful. Like the ill-advised marriage of grapefruit juice and cough syrup. And the caffeine is making my hands twitch while I type this.

While I was doing research on the game's release schedule I stumbled on a message board where American otaku were lamenting the unlikelihood of this drink's stateside release. But those gamers aren't missing anything. This drink will not heal your light wounds. And the target demographic for American Final Fantasy fans is a group that should not be consuming more caffeine.

Let's Learn Japanese: Sukkiri!

Sukkiri! (interjection)
When you rack your brain or search for information for an extended period and then finally come up an answer, the subsequent feeling of relief is expressed by the word sukkiri. There is no literal English translation for this, but it means something like "refreshing!"

I eat an awful lot of Indian food, considering that I live in Japan. A few months ago I was having lunch with Girlfriend at Samrat in Shinjuku (home of some of the best naan in Tokyo) and this totally catchy Hindi-sounding pop song came on the loudspeakers. I couldn't understand any of the lyrics, but the song's melody was stuck in my head all day long (along with a humorous approximation of the words to the song). The more I thought about the song, the more I wished I knew more about it. It was like that episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete when Little Pete hears that "I was around / nobody knows" song and then spends the whole episode trying to remember how the song went. Only in my case, the lyrics in question weren't "I was around / nobody knows." They were "Totay, totay."

At first I tried asking the friendly staff of an Indian restaurant in Shimokitazawa called 2x2=8 for information about the song. But of course, I didn't know the song's title, and I could only sort of sing the "totay, totay" part...so they weren't able to shed any light on the matter for me. (Pretty funny, actually...I sang "totay, totay," and the cashier was like, "Oh yes, totay, totay.") Incidentally, they were equally unhelpful when I asked why their restaurant was called 2x2=8. If memory serves, the sign says "2x2=8," but under that there are hiragana spelling out ni nin ga yon, which means "2x2=4." Go figure.

I tried searching online for the song, but of course that was no easy task since I had no idea how I should romanize the words "totay, totay," or if I was even hearing them correctly. Then, last week, it occurred to me that the song was most likely from a Bollywood movie soundtrack, so I narrowed my search and finally found out that the song is "Dil Tote Tote Ho Gaya" by Punjabi singer Hans Raj Hans, and appears on the soundtrack to a movie called Bichhoo.

Sukkiri!

[ Listen to "Dil Tote Tote Ho Gaya" ]

McDonald's, You've Done It Again

McDonald's, always the beacon of inspiration in the oily sea that is the fast food industry, has once again set the limbo bar in the category of "Things Done to Make Us Seem More Benign." Less than two months after I read in the newspaper than McDonald's would begin displaying nutrition information on it products in some countries, I happened to be walking past a McDonald's in Ikebukuro when I saw an eye-catching piece of trash on the ground: The paper liner from a McDonald's tray, decorated with the words "Let's Exercise!"

I double-backed for the restaurant's entrance, went inside and asked the cashier for a tray liner so that I could take it home and study it extensively.

As consumers we have long been misled to an imaginary connection between McDonald's food, in all its partially hydrogenated, high-fructose glory, and Ronald, a weird clown who is way too thin to have a lifestyle that includes McDonald's in any substancial capacity. Now that rift between product and mascot is widened by the notion that Ronald is the kind of clown who would lead a workout session. But closer inspection of the tray liner reveals the whole thing to be a thinly veiled attempt by McDonald's to escape responibility by separating itself from its increasingly obese clientele.

Ronald McDonald (or, as he's called in Japan, Donald McDonald) is shown leading a series of "exercises." And when I say "exercises," of course I mean "idiotic poses that do not resemble exercise in the slightest."

First of all, we are instructed to "go active." We live in an age where companies go global, women go blonde and fast food clowns go active. Failure to go active before exercising can result in total meltdown of your bodily funtions. My main source of distress is that Ronald does not give us any indication as to what constitutes going active. Do I just put one hand in the air like that? Because if that's all it takes, the Nazis must have been quite the active bunch.

This picture's caption reads, "With one hand in front, HAAAA!" This sentence contains a meaning so profound, so powerful, so explosive...they just couldn't risk putting a verb in it. This is the future of language, people. No more verbs. I wanted to try out this new mode of communication for myself, so I called my credit card company this morning and said, "With my monthly statement, ZOOOOM!" I don't know why it took them so long to figure out that I was requesting a change of billing address.

Next, we have one that roughly translates as "Look, far away!" I appreciate an attempt to be thorough, but...optical exercises? Does McDonald's food make your eyes obese, too? It gives horrifying new meaning to the phrase, "My eyes were bigger than my stomach."

Before we continue, I just want to make sure you're all following along and doing these "exercises" at home as you read this. If you don't, McDonald's will disavow any knowledge of your fatness.

Now Ronald/Donald tells us, "Oide, oide!" which means, "C'mon, c'mon!" I'm assuming that Ronald caught a glimpse of the Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch video for "Good Vibrations" and immediately associated Mark Wahlberg's underwear-endorsing physique with the repetition of motivational phrases like "c'mon, c'mon" and "feel it, feel it!" I, for one, can tell you that I walked around saying "feel it, feel it" for months before I realized my abs weren't getting any firmer as a result.

Finally Ronald announces, "See you at the homepage!" Forget everything you've ever heard about the importance of a "cool-down." Ronald commands you to stop exercising and get yourself in front of the computer immediately! Why are you still exercising? You have twenty seconds to comply!

Now log onto the McDonald's homepage, where you can...uh...well, I don't know what you can do there. I've always thought fast food company homepages were lame and boring and pointless, and I've never logged onto any fast food company's homepage for exactly that reason.

Before I close the curtain on this kabuki of shame, I want to draw your attention to the box at the bottom of the Let's Exercise tray liner:

The title bar reads, "What kind of exercise will you try?" And then it gives you three choices: Kids' exercise, chair exercise and hip-hop exercise. If none of those three choices appeal to your now insatiable hunger for physical activity, tough milkshake. You will select from the Ronald-approved list of three. Sucks to be you. I'm lovin' it.

Honyaku Friday

Heart failure is HOT

Looks like I can strike another item from my list of reasons I prefer living in Japan to living in the US

Reason #87: I don't have to see Paris Hilton on TV in Japan.

No longer! Sleepy-eyed Paris Hilton, who dominates VH1 specials stateside, has been refreshingly absent from the Japanese media until now. But the other day, Girlfriend was watching a morning gossip show and BOOM! There's Paris Hilton on the screen, rubbing a hamburger on herself. The hosts of the show exchanged some comments about the issue of the commercials alleged "sexiness," but the discourse ultimately wound up in coincidence with my own opinion: Paris Hilton cannot make fast food sexy.

This is not only because nothing can make fast food sexy, but also because I find Paris Hilton's tranquilizer-induced facial expressions completely unappealing. Seeing her bite into this six-pound hamburger (in her sleep?) isn't exactly a recipe for eroticism.

I hesitate to completely remove Reason #87 from my list, because this Japanese TV Paris mention could have been a one-time thing. Or, it could be the catapult that launches Paris Hilton to a Bob Sapp level of Japan fame.

Double-translated results from Yahoo Honkayu:

Japanese, I live in my living in U.S.A. and can seem to beat another item from my list of a reason to like.

Reason #87: I do not have to encounter Paris Hilton Hotel on TV in Japan.

No, I am longer! The Japanese media did not have Paris Hilton Hotel (the person influences VH1 special in U.S.A.) which had sleepy eyes refreshingly till now. However, Girlfriend watched gossip show and BOOM in the morning the other day! There is Paris Hilton Hotel to a screen. And I rub the surface of her own with a hamburger. The host of a show changed some comment about a problem of "the seductiveness" that it took of commercial suspicion, but the statement was finally over for agreement of accident in an opinion of my own: Paris Hilton Hotel cannot make fast food sexy.

Because the expression that I say that I am sexy, and anything can do fast food, and I was completely caused by a tranquilizer of Paris Hilton Hotel discovers what unappealing does, there is this. She a hamburger (in her sleep?) of these 6 pounds Is similar, and bite it, and seeing it being accompanied of eroticism is not always a recipe.

Because this Japanese television Paris mention was able to be an old thing, I completely hesitate in removing Reason #87 from my list. Or Bob Sapp level of Japanese fame was able to be the pachinko which started Paris Hilton Hotel it.