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Hiratsuka Beach Skimboarders

Skimboarding is a lesser-known cousin to surfing, though quite different in the approach. Where surfers go from the sea to the beach under the sea’s power, skimmers go from the beach to the sea under their own power- which is to say, basically they run at the sea carrying a short board, drop it in the shallows, and jump on. Perhaps then it’s more like skate-boarding than surfing.

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Vegetable Chu-Hi Cocktails

Japan-based companies Asahi (the brewer) and Kagome (the fruit and veg juicer) have teamed up to present us with a new and unique product: a range of fruit and vegetable sake cocktails. No longer will you have to choose between getting drunk cheaply or drinking a healthy vegetable juice mix, you can now do both at the same time. It sounds like a strange concept, and it is- the marketing ploy behind it must take its inspiration from the recent upswing in the number and variety of vegetable juice drinks available on convenience store shelves- but I have to wonder, who is thinking about their health when they want to get drunk? I would imagine none of us. But perhaps that is about to change…

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A grand but squalid folly- the Queen Chateau soapland

The Queen Chateau Soapland Haikyo in Mito, Ibaraki, is at once a grand but squalid folly. A bath-based brothel rising 5 fairy-tale stories into the sky, cornered with towers and capped with bright red tile, it represents an era gone mad with indulgence, audacity, and hopefulness. Now it lies in crippled ruin, its bright colors fading, its halycon days of glamor and glitz surplanted by ghost-like hangings in its dim and dusty bars. Its grand playing-card Queen still stands aloft emblazoned across the front of the building, but her stare is now more that of the toothless Ozymandius than a haughty mademoiselle.

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Sparkling Boysenberry and Choco Wafers

Japan loves Kit Kats, and exotic flavored drinks, and happily enough so do you and me, so let’s get down to some serious snack deconstruction:

I’ve blogged Kit Kats before, as well as snack/drink combo Pepsi Blue Hawaii + Brazilian Pudding Pocky and others.

This time we have a faux Kit Kat (Choco Wafers) and a Boysenberry Sparkling Soda combo:

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Please do it at the beach

Recently this ad has been cropping up in train stations all round Tokyo:

I’m glad as it’s about time- the number of people I’ve seen hemi-sliced like bacon rashers by those executioner-style train doors is more than I care to think about.

Shlump!

His upper body rolls around messily inside the carriage. Everybody politely ignores it, as they do if a drunk person has a food escape or a homeless person comes on and emanates.

So, it’s certainly about time.

Of course they could just de-sharpen and de-fang the train doors so people weren’t forever getting hemi-sliced, but then what kind of deterrent to dive-bombing Tokyo metro trains would that be?

I’ve gotten myself caught in the guillotine maw doors before, sometimes embarrassingly so- with my new pony-tail pinning me fast until the next stop rolls by. Solution- lean casually against the doors acting like it’s all part of the master-plan.

That aside- there really is nothing like bidding for this dive into the train and making it. I imagine it’s the exact same feeling Maradona had when he scored the ‘Hand of God’ goal. He shouldn’t have made it, it wasn’t supposed to be possible, it was ilicit, everyone knows he cheated fate- but still it worked!

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Kugenuma Beach Hole-Diggers

I’m something of a life-long addict when it comes to digging holes at the beach. I’ve been digging holes since I was a kid alongside my Dad, fending off the sea, arming sea-shell soldiers along a sand-fort battlement, willing the walls to hold and the moat to stay fast.

These days however I forsake the battlements and soldiers and just go for the biggest, widest, and deepest kid-swallowing hole I can dig:

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