A random smattering of various whatnot

We are off for a weekend trip to Sendai with our friend Nagu (and his parents) to visit Nagu’s maternal grandparents (we spent New Year’s with his paternal grandparents). I am especially excited about going to Sendai because a) there is supposed to be this bay with a series of small and pretty islands there that you can take a boat tour around, and b) there is a special sweet from Sendai (of course! did you really think that there would be a town in Japan that wouldn’t have a special sweet?) called kiku-fuku. It apparently is a bun with ice cream inside of it. How amazing would that be? I promise pictures!

Also, in another ice-cream related note: I swear that the ice cream section at our grocery store here in Japan (the one with the “products related to rice” sign) has gotten bigger with the advent of warmer weather. This makes sense, I suppose, since more ice cream is probably consumed in warmer weather. But, please! Can you imagine the ice cream section in a U.S. supermarket shrinking seasonally? As if. This is what makes America great (there is definitely room for a joke here, by the way).

And now, for your amusement while we are out of town, I present some pictures (Rob, note the change from the book reviews. Just for you. Now you’ll just have to do without the knowledge of what I’ve read and what I think about it. Your loss).

First, some hats I knit recently.

The hat on the left is for my mom for Mother’s Day. She actually picked the yarn out in New Zealand – and it is the most beautifully colored wonderfully textured yarn ever. Here’s a close-up shot for proof of this:Also, because it is boucle, it was also quite forgiving of my knitting errors in shaping the top. I just might start knitting more projects with boucle yarn.

The hat on the right is for my friend, Doctor Turan. While I had envisioned making him something subtle and refined in greens and grays, thus befitting his new-ish status as a Doctor, he wanted Bright! Colors! This hat was my attempt to do a little bit of both, plus get better at working with stripes. I’m actually quite pleased with how the hat came out, and the top (proof that I can shape tops, just infrequently) isn’t half bad, either.

Second, for your dose of Japanese items using English in a weird way, I offer you two examples.

This bag is from the juice store (of course!). While the juice store in Tsukuba pales in comparison to that temple of juice perfection that we have in California, Jamba Juice, it is a fun place to go for a semi-healthy weekend treat. Why they a) give out bags, and b) have this written on their bags, I have no idea.

Also, I saw these glasses the other day.

I'm not quite sure what to say about this. I do have a few questions for the person that decided to put this phrase on the glasses, though.