Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

We drove to Yokohama this morning after stopping and buying some gear for our upcoming Mt. Fuji hike. Wasabi wasn't too thrilled about being stuck in her cage while we (quickly) shopped, and she made sure to let us know when we came back. I'm willing to bet that half the parking lot could hear her through the open windows; she's gotten quite vocal in the past week or so! She stopped howling after we got moving and let her have free reign of the car, and she even quieted down enough during the last half hour to take a nap with me!





Dashboard surfing












This afternoon, while Yuki studied, his dad and I went off in search of soy yogurt. (Yeah, it was a really happening Saturday). But in my defense, I realllly miss yogurt and this is the first soy yogurt we'd seen advertised in Japan. They have soy everything else here, but no soy yogurt. And the dairy-containing stuff kills me; if you're lactose intolerant, don't believe that crap about the active cultures in yogurt making it milder on your stomach. It's propaganda and lies, pure and simple!
After much searching (and many attempts at 'reading' labels on my part---this involves sounding out words like a 5-year-old and then trying to guess the contents based on the vocab I actually do understand), we never did find the soy yogurt unfortunately (and his dad indulged me to the point of going to not one but two grocery stores, the kind man). But...we did come across Mango Pudding Kit Kats!


When I first moved here, I had to buy every new flavor of Kit Kat that came out...and a new one comes out every couple of months, at least. But after about a year, it became obvious that a lot of the 'new' flavors were really similar to last year's 'new' flavors. I mean, how many different kinds of green tea Kit Kats can you make? So I kind of fell off the Kit Kat bandwagon. Still, every once in a while Nestle comes out with either an actual brand-new or somehow tempting flavor, and I fork over (chopstick over?) some yen to try it. My all-time favorites so far are the Soy Sauce Kit Kats. Don't mock them until you've tried them. They're a great combination of salty and sweet! These are followed closely by the kinako Kit Kats. Kinako is a kind of toasted soy bean powder that tastes similar to peanut butter (hence my love of anything kinako).
Anyway, we saw the mango pudding Kit Kats this afternoon, and seeing as how I have an incredibly hard time refusing anything mango, Hiroshi bought me a bag. I was still a little hesitant to try them, mango or not, since the last Kit Kats I'd bought (Apple cider vinegar) really didn't taste like much more than a white chocolate Kit Kat, but Yuki and I both agreed that these are pretty good. They actually taste of mango, for starters! Not too sure about the 'pudding' bit, but we definitely could detect mango at the very least. Yuki gave them an 8 out of 10 due to a slightly artificial aftertaste...but then again, I'm pretty sure that Kit Kats of any sort are processed beyond all belief, so an 8's pretty good, all things considered!
...After the Kit Kat tasting, I continued with my super-thrilling Saturday and had some fun playing with Wasabi and the new hiking socks we bought. She didn't appear to find the sock puppet all that interesting though, unfortunately. She much prefers real skin to chew on over socks. Here's hoping that she at least sleeps well tonight after all today's excitement!



New Socks



Who's enjoying the cat toy more?