Weird Kit Kat Flavors

HELLO ALL I AM BACK! IN THEORY. IT'S ONLY WEEK TWO OF THE TERM SO THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET A LOT BUSIER REAL SOON. I'LL TRY MY BEST Y'ALL.

Anyway, onto the actual post.

So as you may or may not know, Japan really likes Kit Kats. This is because the name sounds like the phrase きっとかっつ (kitto kattsu), which translates to something like "you will surely win" so the candy are used as a good luck charm for exams. There is actually a space on the back of the packages for you to write a note. In America, we only seem to have three flavors of Kit Kats (milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate I think) but in Japan there are over 300 flavors. Pretty wild, huh? (you can find a list and further information on the Kit Kats in Japan Wikipedia page)

Now, you may be thinking "Juno, you can't even eat Kit Kats so why are you talking about them?" Well, for one all the Kit Kat flavors in Japan are pretty awesome and secondly I have friends who also know this and can eat Kit Kats. Before I went to Japan, I was asking people if they wanted anything from Japan and a friend of mine wanted some Kit Kats. I was determined to get my friend some cool flavor, so I looked around a lot for something you couldn't get in America. One day, I was walking through the 7/11 near the main guesthouse in Ojiya and saw some small packages of a Kit Kat flavor I had never seen before. I couldn't read the label, but it looked fun so I bought it.

During my travels in Japan, I had started using HelloTalk and decided to post a picture of the Kit Kats I got for my friend to see what flavor I had. When I posted the picture, the first thing people started asking is "where did you get that?" Many of them had never seen the flavor before and were genuinely confused as to its existence. Apparently it had a picture of some famous announcer on it and was cough drop flavored 😂😂😂

 

Yeah I didn't end up giving it to my friend for somewhat obvious reasons. I'm going to Japan 
again this summer and I promise I'll get you something that will actually taste good 😂

Stories From Japanese Class Part Three

Next week is finals week so soon I will be saying goodbye to my group of goofy dudes. Yesterday was our last day of regular class and next week all we have is the final, which is a brochure. Probably won't be getting up to too many antics next week but we've had a lot of fun this past week.

So we often mess around during break and while waiting for class to start. We have done everything from look up the origin of the word poopdeck to playing Cards Against Humanity. Last Monday Bulbasaur-san decided to show me a video of the Jurasic Park theme song played on a recorder but as the song started playing the teacher had us stand up to bow at the start of class. Took a couple tries to turn off the video so once again the teacher was staring at us for doing something weird.

Our final is a brochure and in the second half of class this week we were working on that instead of doing regular lessons. Three of the people at my table brought their computers but Charmander-san was just playing a game on his Nintendo. His argument was that he didn't have his laptop with him so I pointed out he could write stuff out in his notebook. To further encourage him, I picked up my notebook and shook it near him saying "ノート！” (nooto) which is notebook in Japanese. Bulbasaur-san also picked up his notebook and said "ノート！” and basically ever since that day every time the teacher mentions you need to get out a notebook we shake our notebooks at each other while saying "ノート！”...it's really dumb but that's why it's so funny.

My Japanese teacher does this thing where she will ask various questions and students can raise their hands to answer them. In an effort to be a good student I try to always raise my hand to answer one because I'm not too scared of messing up (learning is shouting out the wrong answer with confidence, folks). My teacher asked the question ”きのう、テレベで何が見ましたか？” which means "did you watch TV yesterday?" Now the other day I decided to start watching a kdrama series so I had been watching that the night before so I decided to raise my hand and answer saying that I did watch TV yesterday. However, apparently my teacher had asked ”きのう、テレビで何を見ましたか？” which means "what did you watch on TV yesterday?" Being the honest person I am, I awkwardly said kdrama in an effort to answer the question correctly but before I could get that far the whole entire classroom, and especially the teacher, were laughing their heads off. It was embarrassing but hey I did enjoy the show and as long as the teacher still has a good opinion of me I don't mind.

Stories from Japanese Class Part Two

Because sitting in a classroom full of young adults will always be entertaining, I have more stories.

As a quick reminder, here is where my classmates sit and what I call them:

So for some reason or another during break Bulbasaur-san was showing Squirtle-san how to balance a pen on his finger. Charmander-san and I joined in for a bit before I decided that I should balance stuff on my head instead since I'm quite good at it. I took my textbook, workbook, and notebook and put them on my head. Charmander-san did the same. I then proceeded to put a worksheet then a piece of paper and possibly something else on my head before sitting there to show off my skill. Charmander-san had a similar amount of stuff on his head so we just sat there with books and stuff on our heads. Bulbasaur-san thought this was hilarious so he took a picture. While we were still sitting there with all the random stuff on our heads, the break ended and the teacher started talking again. We started rushing to get the random stuff off our heads but not before the teacher noticed and stopped talking for a second confused as to what we were doing. Shortly after we got the books off our heads and I hid my face in embarrassment but was also laughing because of how ridiculous it was.

In class we were learning how to say what we do and don't like doing. The workbook assignment gave us a variety of activities to put in and one of them was doing laundry. We were discussing what we thought of doing laundry and whether or not we liked it. The general consensus was we didn't care either way but Squirtle-san apparently really likes doing laundry and started describing what doing the laundry is like. Now mind you this is an international student explaining it so while his English is really good it's not perfect all the time. While explaining doing laundry, he said "and you put in the sauce" which made the rest of the table bust up laughing. He didn't exactly seem to notice that he used the wrong word (sauce instead of laundry detergent). However, that was probably one of the funniest word switches I have ever heard. I'll probably do this a lot trying to speak Japanese. I already mix up the words for dictionary and ceiling.

Stories from Japanese Class

Kids will get up to all sorts of shenanigans in the classroom. I don't mean disruptive dancing on the tables type shenanigans like you might expect in middle school but the college kind of shenanigans. The table I sit at happens to be on the side of the room that was all boys before I came into the picture at the beginning of this term. I'm not saying girls can't be goofy and crazy but it's me and seven guys between the ages of 16 and 23 so some pretty funny stuff goes down.

My side of the classroom is set up about like this:

There are 9 tables in the classroom but nobody sits at the table behind my table so these two tables are the right side of the classroom. All the people at these tables are from last term and I simply took the seat of someone who didn't continue with this class.

So the other day we were learning about how to say commands and each table was assigned a different sentence to translate from the workbook. My table ended up doing two because the kids at my table are good about studying. The second one we translated was "please bring me the book." It was easy enough and the kid who has the best Japanese out of all of us, Squirtle-san, got up to go write the sentence on the board. As he got up, he mumbled "本や” which means "bookstore." The rest of my table noticed but we knew Squirtle-san was great at Japanese so we weren't that concerned. However, what he writes on the board is "本やをもってきてください。”　which translates to "please bring me the bookstore." My table is cracking up as he walks back and the teacher is giggling. When Squirtle-san sits back down, Bulbasaur-san turns to him and says, "dude, 本や is bookstore" and everyone starts laughing and the teacher makes the comment of "that would be hard to carry." To save Squirtle-san's dignity I quickly went up there to fix the sentence.

A different day we were doing a similar assignment and while working on our sentence Charmander-san noticed one of the sentences on a different page and tried to translate it because he noticed a verb that interested him. Apparently the verb translated to "to take a shower," but I don't know if that was the correct translation because in that case the full sentence translated to "don't take pictures of me in the shower." While they were talking about that I translated the actual sentence and went up to the board to write it. Apparently they were concerned I was going to write the weird sentence they had translated but luckily for them I do know what I'm doing sometimes.

We often get handouts (like seriously often I'm afraid my folder is going to break) and Bulbasaur-san has taken to writing stuff on other people's handouts. The previous day it was changing the romanization of a verb ending to say something funny and that day it was writing something weird on Squirtle-san's worksheet (I'm next...). While we do know about the weird stuff he writes, apparently Squirtle-san forgot that Bulbasaur-san had written on his worksheet when he went to turn it in. Bulbasaur-san asked him as soon as he turned it in if he had erased the writing and apparently he hadn't so Squirtle-san had to go back up to the teacher to erase whatever it was Bulbasaur-san had written. I'm not sure what was written but it was definitely something stupid.

As stated before, we get a lot of handouts. The teacher was walking around the room giving people handouts and because over two hours of Japanese class gets to be draining a lot of times it is not exactly a pleasant sight to see you have yet another worksheet to do or handout to memorize. Squirtle-san is usually the most frustrated and tends to swear a lot, often in Japanese. Frustrated about the new assignment, Squirtle-san said "くそう、” which while I'm not entirely sure what the translation is, Bulbasaur-san said it means something along the lines of "dammit." Now, cursing about an assignment is fine and expected, but the teacher was literally right behind him when he said this. Squirtle-san realizes his mistake when the teacher puts the handouts down on our table and she and the rest of the table start laughing. Oh, Squirtle-san...

In class we often do this question relay where the teacher asks someone in the room a question and then after they answer it they have to ask someone else a similar question and so on and so forth. We do this enough that we pretty much know the flow of things. The flow in my corner of the room goes something like this:

So the question string gets passed to Bulbasaur-san and continues through my table and I ask Taekwondo-san a question and he answers it and turns to Tennis-san to continue the chain of questions. However, as I look over to watch the question chain continue, I notice Tennis-san is asleep! We are across the room from the teacher so she probably couldn't tell that he was asleep while sitting there but his friend definitely noticed. Now, whenever we start these questions, we start by saying the name of the person we are asking. Taekwondo-san does some quick thinking and says "TENNIS-SAN うちは。。。” and at his name Tennis-san's eyes fly open and he looks at his paper to try to figure out what exactly we were doing. Good job, Taekwondo-san.

More Fun with Google Translate

So one of the students in my Japanese class actually went to Japan recently and because he is an amazing human being he brought back Japanese candy for everyone. Because it is April there was sakura (cherry blossom) flavored candy so that was a special treat. I can't actually have the candy because of my allergies, but everything was nice to look at (he brought a BUNCH of stuff). The teacher said the boxes were nice and that we should keep them so I grabbed one, considering I couldn't actually eat the candy. The teacher had us all stand up and bow to thank him, which was probably one of the most enthusiastic bows I have ever seen in my class (we bow at the beginning of class, during group exercises, and at the end of class).

Here's what I picked out from the candy (which seems silly considering I can't eat it but hey it's nice to look at and I can find someone to give it to)

Isn't the cat candy adorable? We need this in the United States.

Also, because I have food allergies I have a habit of checking the ingredient lists on things. However, the ingredient label on this was entirely in Japanese.

I can read some of it but in general I have no idea what is written there. Since I had a bunch of Japanese right there, I decided to try out the camera function on the google translate app again. Apparently when you point your camera at something it will try to translate it immediately, so this appeared.

So yeah, a lot of it is nonsense, but the fact that it can turn it into English like that is really, really cool. Anyway, it was fun to play with!

Fun with Kanji

I was dyeing Easter eggs and decided to have a little fun writing kanji on them. Since I can't resist stupid humor at all the first thing I did was write 卵（たまご）, egg, on one of the eggs.

The kanji literally looks like two fried eggs. I love it 😁.

Then I wrote the kanji for the days of the week. I do know other kanji but I just like these ones.

Sent a picture of all the eggs to my friend and he laughed at me when he saw I literally wrote the days of the week on Easter eggs. First of all, I had no idea he knew any Japanese also they are proper kanji. But yes, I am 147% ridiculous.

Scavenger Hunt For Japanese

So I was looking around my house the other day and realized that there is actually a fair amount of Japanese words scattered around. Granted, I am noticing it more because I'm trying to learn the language, but there is still a lot that is just there. Here is my scavenger hunt:

This is my bedroom. I wonder what Japanese we will find in here.

What's this on the floor?

My textbook, workbook, and binder! The binder has my hiragana and katakana chart on it for easy reference when writing things out.

Is there anything on my desk?

There is! It's a cup with the animals on it and both hiragana and katakana for the names. Now I can learn the names of animals while drinking tea.

Is there anything on this side of the room?

Yes! There are books on the nightstand!

I also have a shirt with hiragana and kanji on it. The shirt is from a Japanese company and has a drawing of Mt. Fuji on it. Do you have any clothes with kanji on them?

Is there any Japanese outside my bedroom?

This was on the computer in the office in the hall. The kanji there is the kanji for tree (木), which makes sense considering it is a site for plants.

And across the hall from that is the bathroom. Is there any Japanese in here?

There most certainly is! I just noticed last night that the brush in the shower has two kanji on it, one of them being the kanji for water (水).

Is there any Japanese in the kitchen?

Yes! These are the rice noodles I got a couple weeks ago (still have to figure out what to make with them) and there is some kanji on there, only a little bit of which I understand. Considering the ingredients are rice and water and right next to that they have some kanji, one of which is the kanji for water, I'm going to assume the other kanji is rice.

There is also this bag of I believe dried kelp in the kitchen. Not entirely sure how to use it in cooking but I can actually read the hiragana on there and recognize one word (desu).

How about the dining room. Is there any Japanese here?

There is! I was looking through this Japanese manga magazine to see if I could recognize any words.

Here's a random page. There is a lot of Japanese there but I don't really understand much of it.

But here the girl says "watashi wa," which I do know.

There was also the English manga book of Fullmetal Alchemist on the table and in the front of the book they have the original title in Japanese and all the character's names written out in katakana.

So there's some of the Japanese I found looking around my house. Look around your house and see how much you can find! You will be surprised at how much you can find.

Another Grocery Store Adventure

Went to the Asian grocery store again, this time with my sister and our friend! Spent most of the time in the bookstore but also went to other parts of the store.

They have a fabulous selection of pens so I decided to mess around and write something with the sample paper and pens. I wrote the stuff in the bottom right corner, which is "BTS ARMY" and my first name in Japanese. While we were there a kpop song started playing that I knew so I sang along and danced a little. Yeah, I'm an absolute nerd 😆

Look at these reusable shopping bags! They are so cute! 😍 Have to remind myself that I should wait until I go to Japan to get this kind of stuff. So tempting, though...

LOOK AT ALL THE TINY SCISSORS! I actually got one of the ladybug folding scissors. It's tiny enough that I can have it as a key chain on my backpack or take it on a plane.

All of these books in Japanese that I can only kinda read the titles of (there are a lot of books in English too but this is the books in Japanese section).

This section is more where I belong when it comes to reading in Japanese 😝

And here we have my sister and our friend trying on wooden slippers. They had a lot of fun and each have a pair now.

That was our little adventure! Hope you found it entertaining! :D

A Walking Adventure

Here's something about Japan that is definitely not the case in America: everyone walks everywhere! Considering it's something I'm not used to, I figured it would be good to get used to it a bit. Now, I live 6mi/10km from even the small town in my home address, so I can't really walk anywhere useful (aside from the neighbor's house but people drive like maniacs up here and I don't really feel like having to jump into the blackberry vine filled ditch every time I hear a car coming). Anyway, I had some shopping to do in civilization so I figured I could walk between them to some extent.

Picture of my feet because why not. My shoes have little animals faces on them, by the way. Those shoes are surprisingly comfortable for walking in. Definitely bringing them to Japan with me.

Where was I walking? The bookstore! Found both the Japanese travel shelf and Japanese foreign language shelf, pictured here. There was an interesting variety here but not really anything I wanted to buy. Time to walk back to the grocery store where I parked the car!

Here's a "self portrait."

This was a pretty nice section to walk through. Don't be fooled by the lack of cars on the road, though. I just waited until lights further up stopped the cars so I could take a picture without having to worry about blurring out license plates.


After I got back to the regular grocery store I decided to go to the Asian grocery store that was fairly close but decided to drive that one because my lungs were dying. And no I'm not that out of shape I just have a cold and possibly something known as a walking pneumonia. Still something to work on before going to Japan.

Anyhow, eggplants! I got three Japanese eggplants so I can make more vegetable donburi later. Also, it's kinda awkward taking pictures in a grocery store. I had to turn on my camera with it in my bag (because it makes noise when I turn it on) then wait until the staff left the aisle and there weren't too many people there. Because yeah it isn't exactly normal to take pictures of eggplants XD.

And one of the ice cream sections! Definitely some interesting flavors. I'm working on getting more adventurous.

And there is literally a Hello Kitty section in this store. Also a full aisle devoted to instant noodles.

Here is what I ended up getting. The Japanese eggplants, azuki flavored mochi ice cream, and rice noodles. The texture of the mochi is kinda weird but hey there is still ice cream involved so it's pretty good. I can also proudly read the kanji for the ingredients on the rice noddle package. I knew the kanji for water and considering it was right next to the ingredients in English I inferred the meaning of the kanji for rice. It looks a lot like the kanji for tree.

And that was my little adventure! I would imagine your weekends are probably more interesting but hey I tried XD.