Vending Machine - drink

Put coins into the vending machine and get drink. In some country, it's pretty ordinary, and in some country, not. I used to live in some country in Europe, travel arouond the world, of course I have used vending machine, but not as much as in Japan. About 2,260,000 machines are placed in Japan. Never having trouble in finding dirinks in Japan.

Price of the drinks are normally 120yen($1.2)-150($1.5), sometimes cheaper. You can choose from about 25 different drinks. In the winter season, you can get hot drinks too.

Vending machine is "Jidouhanbaiki" in Japanese, and it means "Automatic Selling Machine". But this is too long to say. We normally say "Jihan".
Today's kanji is Coin and Drink.

Japanese Seasonal Beer - Fuyu Monogatari

This beer is winter limited from Sapporo Beer. The name is "fuyumonogatari". "Fuyu" means winter and "monogatari" means winter.





The taste is not that special, but I always try one when I found seasonal one in the store.










Today's kanji is four seasons. If you want to have your own kanji name use NinjaNameDatabase!

Slot machine cops

In Japan, cool web site has been released yesterday. This web site is called slot cop.

http://pachideka.com/

This is a slot machine with photo of a wanted person on the reel. This idea seems sick one way, but other way, I think it's very helpful to arresting criminals, this game can hold more attention than wanted poster on the street.

I never know how casualties feel, but I beleave there is something good for them in this idea.

In Japan, there is a lot of critical comments and agreements. But opinions of mass media in Japan is positive. What do you think about this idea, if this service is released in your coutry?

Today's kanji is Police man and Cop. Police man is formal and Cop is a little casual expression. In Japanese, Police man is "Keiji", and Cop is "Deka".If you want to have your own kanji name use NinjaNameDatabase!

katakana1

Katakana is Japanese one of basic charactor. They are constructed by 46 characters and express pronunciation. The function of katakana is almost same as hiragana. So, what's the difference? The difference is it's use. Hiragana is used to express Japanese word, and katakana is mainly used to express exotic words. So non-Japanese names are expressed by katakana when they are written in Japanese. They are also used to express the reading of Kanji words, since kanji words sometimes have multiple reading or irregular reading and not all Japanese can read them correctly. Below is complete list of katakana.

This list does not seems enough to express pronunciation of English or other language. This is because Japanese has less sound than other language. For example, Japanese does not have pronunciation of "L", so alot of Japanese can't tell "Right" and "Light". Because they are same when written in Katakana.
This may be one of the reason that a lot of Japanese can't speak good English, and non-Japanese people has difficulty in learning Japanese.

But if you want to convert your name to Japanese Kanji, don't need to study Japanese. Just use NinjaNameDatabase!

Red Mt.Fuji

Mt.Fuji is one of the symbolism of Japan. Normally most people, including Japanese, imagine blue triangular mountain with snow on its top. But in Summer and Autum, we don't see snow on the top of Mt.Fuji.

This is Mt.Fuji without snow. And this Mt.Fuji is red! I took this picture from Fuji Speed Way circuit on the day of F1 Japanese Grand Prix.

We can see red Fuji only 5-10 minutes on sunrise of fine day, especially in the Summer and Autum. Red Fuji is called "Aka Fuji" and told as a symbol of good luck. Often seen in the picture of Hokusai's ukiyoe.

Why don't you get up early and see Red Fuji, when you visit!

Pink Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower was colored pink today. I didn't know why, but I have look into it after come back home and know that it was "Pink Ribon Campaign". I don't know this is global or domestic, but this is campaign of Breast Cancer. Anyway there was pretty much people around the tower.

There is always pretty much people around the tower, but not bad as around Shibuya. Comparing to Eiffel Tower, there's less people. There's a lot of people who never been to tokyo tower, even though they live in Tokyo. But I think it's not bad to visit tokyo tower, if you visit Tokyo.

This is how they color Tokyo. This way, color of tokyo tower changes sometime. I think tokyo tower is colored green on end of April.

This is standard color of tokyo tower. It is heigher than Eiffel Tower, but I think Eiffel Tower seems bigger. What do you think?

I sometimes climb up the tower to middle level and drink beer. There was also somoking seat which makes me comfortable for me. This place is most standard for tourist, but blind spot for Tokyo residentiary.

Japanese Seasonal Beer - Aki aji

In Japan, beer company launches seasonal limited beer aside from standard line up. Those are only sold 1-2month in each season. I've been to a lot of contries, but I haven't seen seasonal one exept in Japan. Does any other country have? If so, please introduce me!

Normally, Seasonal beer is not sold in the bar. So you have to buy it in convenience stores.Why don't you try when you come to Japan?



The beer on the picture is Autumn Limited Beer "Akiaji" which means Autumn taste. If you can tell seasonal limited beer by the picrue on the cans, but if you know kanji of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter you'll never miss.