Produce & Mango Kitkats

One of the things you may find strange about Japan is the value the place on perfection. Specifically, perfection in produce. Check out the prices of some of these (really common) things below:

$47 for nine [perfect] strawberries:

$42 for 1 [perfect] cantaloupe. You’d be surprised at how ubiquitous this is – even the corner market has a perfect melon. In fact, this is so popular that I stopped calling it “cantaloupe” and started calling it “perfect melon”.

What’s that? One ear of corn for $6.50? That one doesn’t even look perfect! It’s got lumps in the kernels!

Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea – dinner is not a million dollars. It’s just that it seems very possible that you could very easily spend $300 on a fruit salad.

Personally, I’d rather spend my $2 on a Mango Soup flavoured kitkat. It was tasty!

Jon had a point the other day; they seem to decide a society what the best of something is, and then only sell that. Bakeries? French. Wine? French. Ethnic food? “Italian”. Dogs? Pocket-sized. (Although that last one may have more to do with the size of their apartments than actual preference!). It’s interesting, though not surprising from an area that also values excellence in school and morals.

vehicle accidents.

A funny thing happened on the way home yesterday.

I was hit by a semi. In the car. The car…. was hit by a semi.
Everyone’s okay. It was just a fender-bender, but what the heck?

AND I found out jon’s plane was hit by lightening on his flight home from Japan. Why didn’t that come up before, jon?! He says it was no big deal and stuff like that happens frequently. *I’ve* never been on a plane that’s been hit by lightening. And furthermore, how did it take nearly a week to tell me? Wouldn’t you mention something like that when we have the standard “hi honey, how was your flight?” conversation. Sigh. Boys.

I suppose I am uncommunicative in other ways.

So back to the semi. We’re both sitting at a red light in south-downtown (1st and spokane), waiting to turn right, when the semi starts backing up. Now, I’ve never known cars to randomly back up at a stop light. I’ve never seen this. I didn’t know it was a possibility. On a hill, with a standard transmission, sure – there may be some rollback. But at flat red light, to physically put your car in reverse? No, I just didn’t know that was a possibility.

So the car doesn’t have any majour damage, though it will definitely need a new grill and perhaps a new front bumper. It’s unfortunate that a few deep scratches could cause an entire bumper to be replaced, but i suppose that’s the drawback to driving around in plastic cars.

In other news, we’ve been home for exactly one week now and life is officially back to normal. We’ve (just about) finished unpacking, jon’s going out to see Star Trek tonight with Kyle and Will, and I’m cooking dinner for some friends.

Actually, I’m looking forward to cooking dinner. It’s great to look through my recipes, find something with ingredients that I KNOW i can just go to the store and buy (you’d be surprised how hard it was to find things like cilantro in japan. it was there… sometimes. but let me tell you – it wasn’t called cilantro.) and cook in a kitchen with nice pans and sharp knives.