Round Up, Round Up!

One of my favorite parts of the Tone-gawa bike path near our house

What time is it? Round up time! It’s the end of another lovely week here in Japan, where it’s hovering in between winter and summer, and yet isn’t quite Spring. Hot, cold, windy, rainy, it’ll make your head spin! Much of the country is excited to be kicking off Golden Week, as the first National Holiday hits tomorrow with Showa Day.

Anybody have any exciting plans for Golden Week? Lots of my fellow foreign English Teachers seem to be running off to exotic locales, but Sean’s out of town till Monday, so we’ll probably take it pretty easy next week as he gets over Jet Lag. We are hoping to see some friends and have some fun, but hopefully avoid the famous crowds as apparently the entire country rushes from place to place in celebration of this lovely (though all too short) gasp of freedom.

So, about that round up!

• First off, we had the introduction of Melon Bear, one of my favorite teaching tools. The kids go nuts for him, and he makes me giggle too. Have you guessed an answer in the Hangman game?
• Next up was the music video for Cee Lo Green’s F**k You, with the lyrics translated into Japanese. While it was apparently originally done by a fan, it seems to have been embraced by the Warner camp and can be found on Cee Lo’s official Youtube channel. Also, watching it totally counts as studying Japanese!
• After that we had the Engrish of the Week, which still has me a bit puzzled. It seems like they were trying to say “gangsta” but I still don’t quite get the whole meaning…
• Next up was my entry in last week’s Show me Japan, with some very nerdy toothpaste. Oh, Japan…
• Monday saw some fun with the new Gatsby CM and the possibly immortal Kimutaku. For my next trick, I want you to look up how old he is, and watch the video one more time. He will never age.
• Finally, I reviewed some of my favorite new Haagen-Dazs flavors. At 336 a pop they aren’t cheap, but they sure are tasty!

Outside the world of Super Happy Awesome, there was some pretty cool stuff too!

• Allie at Tokyo Tako had a great interview with author Wendy Tokunaga, about the release of her new book “Marriage in Translation” I’ll definitely be snagging some of this author’s books!
• I won a prize at Tokyo Bounce for tweeting about their Engrishy Placenta Face Mask. My prize? An Engrishy Placenta Face Mask! Oh, man. I’ll be sure to blog about it when I get a chance to try it out, though I still don’t know how I feel about Placenta in my beauty products…
• Just Another Day in Japan has started up their own round-up, with lots of awesome Japan related links to check out!
• Sadly, the lovely HaikuGirl has officially left Japan, but has posted lots of great tales of her recent adventures over on the blog.
• If you’re in the mood for fashion and fun, with a nice dose of honesty, check out the Best of Caroline Josephine‘s Spooning with a Schoolboy. Her posts are always entertaining, and definitely worth adding to your regular reading!

Finally, my favorite new-to-me Blog of the Week is This Japanese Life with awesome posts recently on everything from Combini to Enkai, two of my favorite things about Japan. He’s a great writer, and his posts are hilarious. If you want to know more about life in Japan, give it a go!