Recently, the seasonal menu has been very good. The Olympic menu was pretty good, and the new burgers for Tsukimi are my favorite.

It’s definitely nice to have the option of using a car or using the trains. I think many other countries think of Japanese people always using public transportation. Here in Tokushima, I barely have the option of using a train. I live near a station, but trains only come once or twice and hour with the last train at…

The name is a combination of stone and dog. “Iwa” is stone (岩), and “wanko” is a cute way of saying dog (kind of like doggy in English) that is not inherently female in any way. 子 (ko) means child. It is usually found in female names now, but it is not necessarily female. In fact, in the past it was found in male…

The Serial Experiments Lain game is probably up there too. I don’t know if there was an English release, but I’ve never seen it at a store here for less than 10,000円.

I saw I Am A Hero in a local theater a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it. I am a big fan of the manga, and the movie was well done and followed the story pretty closely. Oizumi You was a great choice for Hideo too.
It seems like it’s being well received as well. There were big promotions around Village Vanguard…

No Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs?

Also, the best pizza I ever had in my life was in New Jersey.

A guy down the street from me has a red Autozam AZ-1. I want it.

It looks basically the same as Jiro Ramen, but Jiro has a shoujo manga-style metal song written about them.

There are regional flavors throughout Japan too. We have sweet potato Kit-Kats in my area.

I’m 100% with you on this. I’ve always thought of the headlights as the eyes of a car. The Pixar style just looks off.

I actually own a Subaru Pleo Nicot, which is specifically designed to look like a smiling face with the headlights as the eyes.

Audis looks boring, but BMWs are ugly.

For me, it’s everything in BMW’s lineup. I can’t stand the front end they put on their cars, and it ruins BMW’s for me. They just put a pig nose on the front of all their cars.

Dekotora is specifically trucks. It comes from デコレーション (“dekoreshon” or decoration) and トラック (“torakku” or truck), so you take デコ (deko) + トラ (tora) to get デコトラ (dekotora).

Bosozoku (暴走族), while it is usually used to refer to biker gangs specifically, is much more general term. Breaking it down: 暴 (bo) = violent, 走…

I think we all do, but hopefully the Amazon show will be good. The new “Top Gear” with Chris Evans might be good too. It’s definitely not going to be like Top Gear, but I think it’s worth giving it a chance but as a new car show rather than a new Top Gear.

I think I can explain the pig. Toyota did a campaign awhile back called Buta Rescue (buta is pig in Japanese) to promote a thing that deodorizes and helps with the decomposition of organic materials to help with compost. Toyota is also based out of Aichi, a prefecture in Japan famous for pork. The pig may have…

Here is doesn’t really look small here. It’s very comparable to the Daihatsu Copen. Of course it is small, but at the same time half the cars on the road are kei cars. To give you an idea of the size of cars here, I drive a Subaru Pleo (I don’t know if it’s sold overseas, but it’s a kei car), and if I pull up next to…

I’ve seen a few S660 driving around town already (I live in Japan). There are so many great looking little Japanese sports cars coming out, but I think this new S-FR is my favorite. Definitely want one.

Here in Japan, the Mini is on the bigger side of cars that I see on a regular basis driving around town. Of course, the average car here is much smaller, so a Mini looks much larger than it would in the American market for example.