Ippoippo

A bit of tongue is all you need to make a lady happy

Heee heee, school boy snigger!

Seriously though, Yuko is pretty chuffed at the moment. In Japan, cow tongue is a very popular meat for cooking with, especially on Barbecues and other Korean type cooking.
So, in Japan it’s very expensive. Beef is expensive anyway, but tongue is really expensive here.
However, in the UK beef is cheaper than Japan. But that’s when you compare sirloin steak with Japan.
When it comes to tongue, most Brits seem to shy away. It looks like we only eat fillet, steak and anything you can roast. Tongue…. nah we don’t do that in Britain.

So, Yuko decided to ask the butcher in the farm shop where she works if he can get some cow tongue for us. No problem. He can’t sell it usually so he could get it easily for us and changed only £2.50 for it. In Japanese money, that works out as 530 Yen at the moment.

やすいぃぃぃぃぃぃ！！！！！！！！[Yasuiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

… or in another words…. “F**king ‘ell, that’s really cheap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I guess I can’t complain. I really liked tongue cooked Japanese style and it’s a good way to get beef on the cheap.

(Message to ‘M’ and ‘G’. You ate tongue when we went to Korean BBQ place during our wedding festivities weeked…)

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy in work… hence the lack of posting. This week is the last ‘big push’, so it will be nice to get that out of the way.

Meanwhile, Yuko and I have been reaping the rewards of our gardening, sampling some of the potatos, turnips, various herbs, various salads and onions that we’ve been growing.
We’ve haven’t eaten much of it yet, but our Kale plantation has grown really well, and the peas and beans are on the way now too. Some of the oriental greens have now been planted for later on in the year.
All good stuff anyway.

Next month, Yuko and I are also off on holiday to Italy (Florence and Bologna). Now, since jetting off there is somewhat ‘un-eco’ (going there is un-eco too I admit), we’ll be going by train instead. So, it’s off to London by train, then hope on the Eurostar to Paris. Then we’ll take the sleeper train from Paris to Florence. We’ll get to see a fair bit of the journey on the way down I guess, before so that will be quite nice I hope.
The plan is to spend a little time in Florence, with a little trip out to the wine making regions before heading up to Bologna. This will be Yuko’s first trip to Italy and the my second (my first being to Bologna as the base for daily trips down to Imola for the San Marino Grand Prix back in 2001).

We’ve decided to do this now because fuel costs (and thus travel) are heading up now so we should do this while we can. Also, this will be our first holiday together since we’ve got married (yeah, I know we’ve been to various places since then, but the trip to Australia was for my work and trip to Japan last December was more about family and friend commitments, and the trip to Paris was really only done as a favour for Yuko’s cousin when he visited the UK)… so at long last get to have a week off together. Hurrrahh!

Ahhh, nostalgia. 10 years ago now (well, 10 years this October), when I was a complete petrol head, just left university, and still loved to play games on my PC… Grand Prix Legends arrived!

None of this arcade-y type racing game, this was a proper hard-core simulator, and I would be playing for a good number of years after it came out (it was patched a fair bit with improved grpahics etc etc).

Of course, since then, I’ve been to Japan, gone ‘green’, got married (so less spare time too geek around)…

However the world of simulations moves on, and I saw this recently on YouTube.

How cool is that (well, maybe not the gloves )…
Hmm, what’s the Carbon footprint of doing that for real versus the electricity usage of running it on a computer.
Most of these games are on PC still, however we now have a iMac as well as the MacBookPro. The iMac is Yuko’s machine (and TV machine). But that machine also has a Windows partition on it so we can run some Japanese software that isn’t available on the Mac. Hmmm, Windows partition… Windows car games.

There has been a fair bit of coverage in the British press recently by the increases in stabbings and knife crime in London.

However, on Sunday, Tokyo was hit my a mass stabbing. The BBC coverage is here, MDN Coverage (in English) here, and there is some blog coverage here. (Warning, the blog report has slightly more graphic pictures).

It’s all pretty horrific, and seems a lot worse in way because this kind of crime is relatively rare in Japan.

Meanwhile, there is a 2-ch (Ni-Channel, a large Japanese chat forum) backlash now, because of the somewhat idiotic actions of bystanders in the background of live TV reports who were mucking around.
Whilst those people being somewhat insensitive is pretty depressing, the 2-ch mob reaction is pretty unpleasant too.

Other Japan links

Talking of mob reactions, the Times newspaper reported on mob behaviour by parents of Japanese school kids.

The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part of Snow White.

An alternative approach to spreading Peak Oil theory to the masses???

Here and here.

Ahh, the sex sells approach ehhh?

‘Oily Cassandra’ (the second link above), has done some other videos, and she really is quite the ‘doomer’ (she’s done other videos.)