the japanese and their oddfangled snacks

oh wait wait I thought of another thing to write about.
so as all of you /should/ know, being in Mrs. Musick's class, the Japanese class is selling Japanese snacks to raise money. Right, right.

To some of you, the current snacks may be weird, and to others, that stuff may be completely normal.
I mean, Ramune. A neat bottle sealed by a glass marble. People seem to be disappointed when they find out you can't take the marble out, though. (Unless you break it!) But I like seeing people amazed by what the marble does and stuff.

Pocky. Mrs. Musick says chocolate-covered pretzels sticks, but I just call them biscuits because they're not salty. (Which is good, because I don't like salt + chocolate. I don't even like pretzels.) Not too odd looking since they do look like chocolate pretzels, they just look oddly skinny compared to those. And if you happen to let it melt, you have to eat it in a huge blob. I am speaking from experience.

Safe to say, those two snacks are on the normal side of the Japanese snack spectrum!
There are weirder things out there in Nihon.

Let's show you what you're missing out on, hm?
In no particular weirdness order.
First up!!

Green tea chocolate sticks. To most Westerners, any sort of snack that has tea in it is already odd. In the Asian world, green tea anything is kind of super common. I've never tasted this, but I have tasted other green tea products (ice cream!). Mostly it just tastes like green tea. I don't like green tea myself unless there's a bunch of sugar, so I normally describe the taste as usually "plant". I wonder if the chocolate would change anything, though?

Next!
Pancake-flavored Kit Kat bars.

For some reason unknown to me, Kit Kat has become weirdly popular in Japan. They have all sorts of weird flavors. America, we have like, 2, I think? White chocolate and milk chocolate. Japan has things varying from Green tea (told you they make green tea everything in Asia), cheesecake, and Sakura/cherry blossoms (yes, flower-flavored kit kat).  I would want to try them all, but the more limited/rare flavors are expensive.

つぎ！(next!)

Tomato Chocolate. I don't even. Apparently Meiji is trying to get children to like the flavors of vegetables. Good luck with that!

つぎいいいい (nextttttttttttttt)

Yeah, what it looks like. Rose-flavored gum. The Japanese make several flower-flavored things...

P.S. My sister bought some Sakura bubblegum at the airport in Japan. It tastes exactly how it's labeled. Like flowers! XD Weird experience, but I didn't hate it. Seems like a flavor that could get addicting after a while. Weh, I want some now.

I think I will end it here. But I'll leave you with a list of other Japanese treats I've heard of but am too lazy to find pictures of:

1. Any kind of seafood? Name it, and they'll likely have an ice cream flavor of it. I've seen Sardine ice cream, octopus and squid ice cream... yeah. Kinda. Blegh.
2. Soy sauce flavored pretzels. Sounds salty.
3. Sakura green tea. Wow, that's like super Japanese.
4. Chocolate ramen. But isn't really ramen. false advertising! shame, I would have wanted to try it, too.

Oh look, a list of different kit kat flavors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_kat#Varieties
Check out how many are from Japan, woah. Aloe vera? Bubblegum? There are Calpis and Ramune too, lol. (Calpis is another Japanese drink.)

hikikomori

Welp.
I'm behind on my blogging, I think. Bad self. I thought this would never happen!
But I am the queen of laziness compared to pretty much everyone I know, so...
Like, I'm totally capable of doing whatever I want if I put my mind to it.
But since I know that, I'm just like 'ehhh i'll do it later then'.

However, being both a procrastinator and a perfectionist kind of shoots me in the foot.

ANYWAY.
I have a headache. It's a dull sort of pain, not like someone is stabbing me in the temple with a pencil, more like some random combination of tired achey...ness?

It is tolerable now though, because I closed my window and turned my computer brightness all the way down. I think the light gives me headaches. Bright sunlight gives me headache, and being in the sun makes me tired and sleepy and prone to long nosebleeds. And I don't even know why!

I used to be an outdoorsy kid when I was younger. Loved rollerblading and riding my bike and playing football with my daddy.

But I am 18 now, my rollerblades have gathered dust in the garage (and are probably too small for me now anyway), my bike has been sold, I can't catch a normal-sized football, and my daddy lives in California. I hate going outside and being outside tires me much easier. I know, I know. I'm one of those kids of our generation that don't get enough exercise, I know. But thankfully my metabolism is nice enough to me that I don't ever have to diet or watch what I eat or anything.

I run on the treadmill sometimes. I would play our Wii Fit, but our Wii is broken. I could play Dance Dance Revolution (which is my choice of exercise, used to be able to play for hours), but my dance pad is broken too.

And so now I'm a weak, pale, 18 year old Asian girl who sits at home studying and techology-ing. (But I'm good at techologying! My typing speed is 79WPM at the moment. That's almost double the average. Haha!)

I guess my metabolism is against me in a way, though. It takes a lot for me to gain weight. Like a lot. @__@ And I lose weight very very easily boooo, so I can't exactly exercise too much because I'll lose weight. Then also less weight = less energy (I learned that in health!). I will give you an idea of how hard/easy it is:

1. I finally reached 100lbs in I believe 10th grade. I was 16. 16 years to gain 100lbs. That's about 6.25 pounds a year.
2. Come 6 months after my 16th birthday, we go on a trip to the Philippines.
3. I hate Filipino food. Refused to eat most of it.
4. Stay in the Philippines for 3 weeks. Didn't do anything but lounge around and be lazy and shop (as you are supposed to do on vacation!)
5. Come back and I have lost 7 pounds. More than a year's worth of weight, gone in 3 weeks. 8( DO NOT WANT.
6. I am 18 and have still not gained that weight back. Weighed myself at Costco (they have cool scales, yo), and am currently about 98.9lbs.

This is the story I tell every time someone tells me to exercise. :'D

*disclaimer: for anyone who might happen to think that this kind a metabolism is a good thing:
It's not. I'm like 25lbs under the healthy weight for my height. I have to take silly vitamins. I pass out easier than most if I don't have enough nutrients, especially sugar (thanks hypoglycemia, you're such a doll). I get dizzy if I put too much stress on myself, physically or mentally (that my just be my anxiety, though). Also it is SO HARD to find clothes that will properly fit. Especially pants! ; A ; They're either too short or too loose, boooo. This height/weight ratio I have here isn't so great. It kinda sucks! But I am thankful to God that I don't have to limit the amount of sugar I eat.

And my headache is much better, yeah!
See I feel better when it's dark. My sister keeps claiming I'm a vampire, or that I'm Edward Cullen. I'm not! I don't sparkle! I just have eyes that are hypersensitive to light and the sun makes me sooooooooo sleepy.

In conclusion, I am cat.

By the way: "hikikomori" = 'shut in' or 'stay-at-home' in Japanese.