The Honda Supercub has surpassed the 60-million mark of total units produced! It’s the 50th anniversary of the legendary bike. It’s the highest selling vehicle of all time, and it gets ~100 mpg.

Article at Yahoo! Japan

Translated (to English) article

A fun little anime clip I found from The Scooter Scoop:

Mariko sent me a link to a fantastic article by Chris Kohler about the opening of a Go Go Curry restaurant in NYC. It’s got me craving Japanese curry so badly! His description of J-curry is right on the money, and I was so glad he mentioned the practice of topping the curry with cheese. It’s my preferred method of eating kare-raisu (curry rice).

“Go Go Curry Brings Japan’s Authentic Comfort Food to NYC”

Yay! Gokusen 3 has started! Can’t wait to see this!

Here is a CM (commercial) for an Ebi Filet-O Basil sandwich. When I visited, I had to get an Ebi Filet-O. But not with basil. That was a special edition I guess. Maybe next time! And I didn’t see Ebihara Yuri in any McDonald’s I have visited. :( But the sandwich was tasty. I’ll definitely get it again.

In ‘95, after I visited Tokyo with my parents, I decided I wanted to live in Japan. So the next year, I moved there and started living my dream. I also met my dream girl there and we got married. However, her longtime dream was to live in the States, and a couple years later when the opportunity arose to move back, we decided to take it. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel any regret, however, meeting new friends and having two wonderful kids in Texas has been pretty damn awesome!

Our recent trip back to Japan reminded me of just how great it was when we lived there, and Mariko and I have talked about about moving back when the kids leave the nest. This got me really excited, and actually every time I think about moving back there (even if it will be 15 long years down the road) I get butterflies in my stomach.

It’s funny how my attitude has changed. It used to be that when I thought about Japan, I felt melancholy from the memories of the life we had there in the past. But now when I think about Japan, I am thinking about the life we will have there in the future. Lots of butterlies right now!

Bay and Koa, but mostly Koa, are really into Super Sentai shows right now. They have some Mahou Sentai Magiranger and Juken Sentai Gekiranger dvd’s, plus a bunch of toys. We recently got a special DVD called Mahou Sentai Magiranger vs. Dekaranger which features both groups of rangers. There is one part in the show when the two Magi Ranger girls, two of their enemies, and the two Dekaranger girls are all together, but the evil ones are dressed as Dekarangers (SPD uniforms), then the Dekaranger girls are dressed in the bad girls gothic monster costumes. Then, the Magiranger girls go poof and are dressed as Dekarangers. This whole cosplaying of cosplay made my head spin. I don’t want to analyze the dynamic too much. Of course all the girls are super cute, so it’s all good, as the kids say!

More links:

Official Mahou Sentai Magiranger page

Official Dekaranger page

Super Sentai Database

I decided not to bring my little GPS unit to Japan because I figured it wouldn’t be very useful since I don’t have any map data on it. Plus I could travel lighter because I wouldn’t have to bring extra batteries and charger. But now I regret that, since it would have been good to save the track data and look at it in Google Earth. For instance, I would have loved to check out the route our bus took up to the resort in Kanazawa. Oh well, next time I will remember!

Just updated with Dec 25th’s happenings!