Speaking of Yoshinoya. . .
The logo is designed to resemble that of Yoshinoya, but the text says “yokozuna” (sumo grand champion) instead.
Available from our good friends and sponsors over at J-List.
Good news for you Yoshinoya enthusiasts. The massive restaurant chain Yoshinoya & Co has released a statement today saying that it will begin serving its staple food “Gyudon” beef bowls again. The only catch is that it will only be during lunch hours starting December 1.
It’s been a long time coming for Yoshinoya whose beef bowls are a staple diet for Salarymen (and yours truly). Because of the embargo on U.S. and Canadian Beef, the company had to stop selling its beef bowls in place of “Butadon” pork and “Toridon” Chicken simply because of lack of supply.
Since the Japanese government has eased its import ban on outside beef in July of this year, beef is again finding its way into supply in Japan. And so the company lead by President Shuji Abe decided to put Gyudon back into its menus.Beef bowls, if you’ve never had the pleasure of eating one, are fast food rice bowls served in a variety of ways. They are always served in a porcelain bowl with a good helping of rice and are topped with a variety of items. Some have pork and kimchee, while others have natto. The selling point is that it’s a filling delicious meal that is usually served within one to two minutes from order and can cost you between 350 yen to 550 yen depending on what you order.
The beef ban first began in December of 2003 when the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, or BSE broke out. The effect was felt in most restaurants as Japan relies on foreign imports for the lion share of its beef and meat supply.
A girl’s high school in Nagasaki is planning to add chopstick skills to its battery of entrance exams next year.
Sasebo Women’s High School administration officials say they want to determine whether prospective students are capable of minimal dining etiquette.
The “chopstick inspections,” which include picking up slippery beans, will influence the screening process to a certain degree, officials at the school said.
As crazy as this sounds, some of the younger generation really use some strange grips when it comes to using chopstics and when writing.
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Yoshiyuki Sankai, the Tsukuba University professor who invented the “hybrid assisted limb” (HAL) bionic suit, has announced that he is getting ready to start marketing the robot suit.
The HAL system detects faint electrical signals through your skin when you move and activates motors to assist in the movement.
A company named Cyberdyne will start out by producing 20 units in 2007, which they expect to increase to 400 to 500 units during 2008.
Owning your very own HAL suit will set you back anywhere from 5 million to 7 million yen, but the company also plans rentals for 70,000 yen per month.
(I wonder what the “buttery pack” does. . .)
Via Engadget
From Mainichi:
A man armed with a baseball bat and a knife stormed into a language school here Monday morning, injuring a Chinese student, police said. The suspect, who lives in a fourth-floor room of the building that houses the school, has refused to talk about the motives for his crime, investigators said.
Since the police are stumped as to his motives, I’m going to speculate myself. It could only be that he just wanted them to keep the noise down or that the voices in his head wanted him to tell them to ‘Stop learning Japanese! Stop learning Japanese!’.
Either way, I’d suggest the government channel more funds into mental health programs as ‘this kind of thing’ is certainly on the rise.
As we reported on Japan Talk #045, a government worker in Nara received full wages during a five-year period during which he worked a mere 8 days: one day in 2001, six days in 2003, and one day in 2005.
According to city officials, there was nothing they could do about it, because the man broke no laws or regulations!! According to in-house regulations, a Nara Municipal Government worker is entitled to up to 90 days of paid sick leave for a single illness. The man kept taking sick leave, submitting certificates from a doctor, always for a different ailment.
Now it has been learned that the employee in question and others from the Nara Municipal Government pressured the doctor into issuing false certificates.
According to the doctor, the former employee began coming to the clinic about two years ago.
He complained of a backache or diarrhea he claimed was work-related and had the doctor write about 20 certificates to submit to his workplace.
Another employee visited the clinic and demanded the doctor write a certificate concerning a disease the employee used to have. When the doctor refused, a man identifying himself as the employee’s boss visited the doctor and said the two would be in trouble if they did not have the certificate. The man also asked the doctor to extend the employee’s treatment period.
Meanwhile, the government is still claiming that taxes will need to be raised in order to cover shortfalls.
Good advice according to a report in the Cambodia Daily.
A man died on Friday and his two young daughters were poisoned after eating toad’s eggs in Kampong Cham province’s Kang Meas district, police said. Sarm Hou, 45, died, but doctors were able to save his daughters, aged 4 and 8, district police chief Cheng Sokhoeun said on Tuesday. “He ate a lot and his children ate less,” Cheng Sokhoeun said. People in the district dare to eat toad’s eggs even though they are poisonous, he said, adding that some may believe that they are similar to non-toxic frogs.
Though you might think that most people would be interested in keeping toads as far away from their mouths as possible, cane toad licking seems to be popular recreational activity among people looking for a halleucenogenic high.
As an evolutionary protective measure, cane toads secrete a variety of poisons, mainly through gigantic glands on either side of its head which can spew venom several feet. The toad’s skin and body are also infused with toxins. This makes the toad poisonous to most of its predators, but it has the odd side effect of making the toad hallucinogenic for people who lick it, or very carefully smoke or eat specific parts.
In addition to whatever social stigma you might incur, toad licking is a fairly dangerous activity — the main point of poison is, after all, to kill those who ingest it. This presents a particular danger for dogs who share an ecosystem with the toads, since a dog will lick just about anything you put in front of it.
Slurp. . .
