A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Latest variety: Sesame Noir, with an accent on the first e. This is to distinguish it from Black Sesame, which are cracker sticks sprinkled with black sesame seeds. Sesame Noir is rice crispy bits stuck together with sweet black sesame flavored frosting. OMG so good!

Of course, I am consistently the only non-Chinese person at the dim sum table who likes those black sesame jelly roll-ups (does anyone know what I'm talking about or what they're called?) so I'm not exactly recommending Sesame Noir to a general audience.

Pumpkin pocky, now, seems to meet with universal approval. Even from me, a pumpkin hater, because it tastes more like caramel.

http://www.alde.com/anime/pocky1.html

Yesterday my refrigerator defrosted, which I of course didn't notice until after eating something from it, after which I felt vaguely nauseated all day and had to replace everything in the fridge, which luckily was not much. (Do pickles go bad after a defrosting incident? What about mustard?)

I took that as an excuse to go to the Japanese market with the used manga (in Japanese only) adjunct store. The women there do speak English, but they'll let me practice Japanese on them as long as I don't take too long to understand what they're saying. If I hesitate more than ten seconds, they'll translate. It makes me feel like I'm on Japanese Jeopardy, and makes shopping there a bit unnerving.

Me: "Saiyuki wa arimasu ka?"

Two ladies and young man: Blank stares.

Me: "Ah, Gensomaden Saiyuki?"

Two ladies and young man: Blank stares.

Beat.

Young man (enlightenment dawning): "SAI-yuki?"

Me: Hai!

Two ladies: Ah, SAI-yuki!

Me (in my mind only): Huh?

The young man led me to-- score! -- volumes two, three, and-- double score! five-- in Japanese, two bucks each, original Japanese covers, oversize format the better to ogle the guys with, and also with lettering large enough that the hiragana cheats next to the kanji are mostly legible.

I spent much of this morning attempting to read volume five. My Japanese sucks. I wouldn't have understood any of it if I hadn't seen the anime already. It's the one that's mostly an extended flashback to everyone meeting for the first time-- well, the first time since Heaven-- beginning when Gojyo picks Hakkai up off the middle of the forest path and then after a lot of spoilery stuff they become roommates. Or possibly "roommates." There was a drawing of condom wrappers with an explanation I couldn't understand at all, but was probably, "They're for Gojyo's girlfriends. Girlfriends. Definitely girlfriends. To repeat: girlfriends."

Also, if anyone has read that far already in Japanese or scanlations... how shall I phrase this... does it make any sense whatsoever for Hakkai to wear a monocle? I mean, is that explained at all? Do the monks have really incredible healing powers that Sanzo himself never learned?

I also bought a CLAMP comic I never heard of called REX, about a cute little dinosaur. I wanted to buy some X, but they only had volumes I already had, with no additional or different art.

The market offered some new Pocky flavors: coconut milk, orange/chocolat, cream, cookies and cream, and maple custard.

what flavor pocky are you?

[c] sugardew

I also bought some darling little teeny weeny kawaii miniature sushi/sake sets, the ones that come in little numbered boxes where you have to collect all five hundred to get a complete banquet set. They also come with little white tablets. I'm not sure if those are candies or drying pellets. After the defrosting experience I was afraid to try one.