GariGari-kun Returns! (with Milk!)

So, I was just going along, doing some grocery shopping, and I decided to check out the ice cream section, because, you know, ICE CREAM. Little did I know a magical surprise awaited me there. A new special flavor of Garigari-kun Rich!

Milk! Nice piercing, Garigari-kun!

Why yes, yes indeed. It's a milk flavored ice pop. I figured this would either be disgusting like the others, or just taste like frozen milk.

By the time I bought it, drove to my friend's house, and opened it, the melting process had begun.

Looks so delicious and not solid!

Not to be discouraged, I dumped it in a plastic tray and bravely carried on. I tried to pick up the stick...

Stick only please! Thank you!

... and it came right through. So I ate it using the stick as a tiny thin spoon. My friend also tried it.

Despite the melted consistency, this was actually rather delicious. It was a mixture of vanilla soft serve and milk. The local mountain here, 大山 (Mt. Daisen), is famous for it's milk flavored soft cream, and this tasted just like that. Sweet milk. I would definitely eat this one again, hopefully in a more solid frozen form. If you want something with a lot of flavor, this is really not gonna do it for you. But if you want a subtle, sweet flavor, or really love milk or vanilla ice cream, you would probably enjoy this.

Good job Garigari-kun!

GariGari-kun's Food Flavors (of doom)

GariGari-kun is a brand of popsicles here in Japan. Or ice pop I guess I should say, as Popsicle is a brand name.You can walk into any conbini or super market and purchase yourself one of these for anywhere from 60 yen to 150 yen, depending on where you go. (Conbini products having a higher mark up and all.)

"Gari gari" is Japanese for crunchy. Add the "kun" honorific (reserved for boys), and the ice pop's name is "Crunchy-boy."

Hi there! I'm Crunchy-boy!

Anyhoo, as we all know, the people of Japan love kakigori. (Shaved ice or snow cones for those who don't speak Japanese.) Every summer, restaurants and food stalls at festivals do a roaring syrup covered ice bits trade. The idea behind Garigari-kun was to have a way to eat kakigori in one hand, not in the traditional cup with a straw.

The idea is a harder "ice candy" outside layer keeps the shape and protects the inside, which is the soft kakigori filling. Research on Google suggests that originally this idea, while wonderful in theory, didn't work so well in real life. However, they seemed to have got it right eventually, as Garigari-kun is the number 1 selling ice pop brand in Japan. Their standard flavor is ラムネ (ramune), or soda flavored. They also make many different flavors, as well as limited time seasonal releases, such as watermelon, peach, grape, etc.

But on to the real point of this post, Garigari-kun's "rich" limited flavors.
Somewhere along the line, someone at the company thought, "Hey! Let's make food flavors! Why not?"

Back in 2012, they had a corn soup flavored one. I did not try it, but on all accounts, it seemed to be disgusting. The company, not to be discouraged, especially because so many people bought it on it's weird factor despite the taste, every once in a while come out with a new flavor.

Deciding to be brave, and see what all this was about, I purchased the 2 flavors available to me at the time, "Cream Stew" and "Napolitan Pasta." Not about to do this alone, I recruited my friend Kako, her husband, and her 2 sons to help me.

Yum!

On the left is the Napolitan flavor. It's a tomato flavor ice shell around the soft pasta sauce tasting center. It also has tomato jellies in the center. On the right is the Stew flavor. It's white stew shell around a softer stew flavored center, with real potato chunks in it. Oh yes, potato chunks.

Do we really want to eat these?

First of all, we all agreed they were both disgusting! I think we ended up throwing half of them out because no one wanted to eat them.

I don't like it. Take it back!

That said, let's go over what they actually tasted like, other than nasty.
The stew flavor tasted like salty milk. Kako and her family thought it was better than the neopolitan flavor, (not good mind you, just, not as bad) but I couldn't agree. I ate one bite and thought I was going to be sick. The texture was horrible, though that could because it sat in my freezer for a month or 2 until I got everyone to try them. The potato chunks were cold and mushy and just plain disgusting. The whole thing was a mushy starchy disaster in my mouth.

Don't they seem impressed?

The neopolitan pasta flavor tasted like ketchup. It was frozen watered down ketchup. It was also rather salty, but the tomato jellies weren't bad. Once you got used to the flavor, it was a little easier to eat (for me, not for the rest,) and it had a strangely sweet after taste. I think I managed to eat half of it before I gave it up as a bad job.

In short, it was interesting to eat ONCE. Never again.

Never again!

Driving in Japan, keeping on keeping on

Long, long ago, or you know, 2 years ago, I went through the highly ridiculous and slightly tedious task of receiving a Japanese Driver's License. Through many trials I prevailed, until I could indeed drive legally here in Japan.

However, this very month, a new challenge arose. My license was about to expire.

The shock! The horror! The danger! The giant eyes!

Basically, when you "transfer" your foreign country's driver's license over to a Japanese one, the new Japanese license is good for 2 years, give or take, as it expires 1 month after your birthday. You are allowed to renew your license starting 1 month before your birthday, and ending 1 month after.

My birthday being in September, I have a renewal period of August to October. Now you may be saying, "Hey, that's 2 months. Plenty of time to renew it! No big deal, right?" And perhaps you would be correct, except for the Japanese love of all things in duplicate paper work, everything thing being EXACTLY perfect, and a penchant to make people re-do things over and over and OVER until it is how they want it. Let's also add in strict rules about what times you can actually go to renew, and the probability that you can't actually understand what anyone is saying to you. In my prefecture's case, to renew a license, one needs to go to the driving center during the registration times of 8:30-9:30am, or 1:00-2:00pm, Sunday through Friday.

As someone who teaches English in schools, and therefore is busy every weekday from 8:30-4:00, renewing creates a bit more of a challenge. However, in August, it's still summer vacation (ish... I've already been to one of my schools 3 times, and will go back more later this week.) The perfect time to do the things you don't have time for normally! My last Tuesday of Freedom was quickly approaching, and decided that this was my chance, no having to figure out how to go during a time when I was supposed to be working. Yes, Sundays are a possibility, but from everything I heard, Sundays are also terrifying, because that is when ALL the people who work weekdays go. If you go on a Sunday, be prepared to get there as soon as possible (hopefully, BEFORE 8:30) and line up with everyone else in hopes they'll get to see you.

That being said, the people at the driving center do have this down to a science. I showed up at 8:30, and they were ready to direct me where to go. As I have changed addresses from when I got my license, I first had to go to Window 5 (that's in my center. Your center may be different.) to get a change of address form. Apparently, I was supposed to have already done this at my local police station when I first moved, by taking them my license and 2 pieces of mail (official type stuff like bills or paychecks) and having them change it. I, however, did not do that, due to ignorance or laziness or who knows what. I didn't do it. This did cause a small problem for me in that all drivers receive a postcard in the mail telling them:

A) Your license is about to expire!

B) This is where you go to renew!

C) These are the times you can go to renew!

D) Probably other important information!

E) Don't speak Japanese? Bring this postcard with you, and they'll know exactly why you're there, no broken Japanese explanations necessary.

Instead, I troubled the people at my office to get me all the information I needed, and then my friend Kako to go with me and help translate. I'm such a stinker.

So, anyway, I had to go to window 5, where they took my DL and copied it, and checked my mail I brought that it was indeed a different address. Or something, I have no idea what they were looking for. Then, I got a piece of paper where I had to write my name and my new address. They took that back and took my piece of mail back to check that yes, the address I wrote and the address on my mail were indeed the same. They then proceeded to copy my DL again. They stamped some things, gave me my DL, mail, and 1 of the copies of my DL and the new address written on it, and told us to go start at the beginning.

So, we went back to the entrance, handed the DL and the papers over, they nodded that everything was in order, and sent us to window 1. At window one, they once again copied my DL (so much paper!) and had me pay the 4000yen renewal fee, and gave me some paperwork to fill out. The paperwork was 2 papers, one were I wrote my name, birthday, DL number, and chose a PIN for the IC chip they put in the new DLs. (Not sure what the use of that will be.) The other paper was questions about illnesses and if they hinder your driving. I actually have no idea what they asked because Kako read them and told me I didn't have any of those problems and just to check no for everything. Sign. Date. Done.

We then moved on the the eye check station. I handed over my paperwork and license, and he asked if I could see without my glasses (the answer being very much no.) He then informed me that he couldn't tell if the 6 I wrote on the question form was a 6 or a 4.... Which to me is idiotic. It was today's date. Of course it's a 6. However, he pulled out a new paper and I got to re-write all the answers, the date, and re-sign it, while he voided my other paper and put it to the side. I wrote my 6's very carefully. Then I got to look into a machine and point which way the C was facing, very easy, and he signed off on my nonsense and sent me to the next section, where I got to take my new picture. That was it. All that took maybe 20-25 minutes.

Then came the fun part. As part of renewing your license, you are required to sit through a lecture of road laws and safe driving. Depending on how long you've had your license and how many traffic violations you've had, it can be 30 minutes to 3 hours. For renewing the first time, a wonderful 2 hour lecture was in order. Like the registration times, they have them only 2 times a day, at 9:45 and 2:15 at my center. If you are too late in registering and miss it, they will tell you to come back later or the next day. If too many people register in front of you and fill up the lecture, they will tell you to come back later or another day. You will not get your license until you participate in the lecture.

The lecture's books, about driving safety.

What you get to stare at for the next 2 hours.

Despite my complete lack of knowledge of the Japanese language, I was still required to sit though it. From what I could understand, they basically talked about the number of accidents in the area, things to watch out for when driving, laws that may have recently changed, no drinking and driving, etc. The instructor used power point on the TV. When there were pictures, I could figure out what he was talking about, even though I couldn't really understand him. The slides with just text and numbers were beyond me. There were also many slides that were copies of a poster or pamphlet, squished to fit on the slide. The media arts major inside of me was in severe pain. There was also a 45 minute movie about hitting pedestrians and cyclists with your car and how to be careful. It included 6 examples, in which at least 4 the pedestrian or cyclist was definitely at fault as they sped through stop signs, didn't look for oncoming traffic at all, wore dark clothing as they jaywalked at night, hung out in drivers' blind spots, and basically disregarded all traffic laws. This is actually pretty accurate of the pedestrians you typically find in Japan.

When the lovely lecture I didn't understand was over, we were escorted back to window 5 or 6, where they took our old license, punched a hole in it, and gave us our new ones. And that was it, mission accomplished.

All in all, much easier than getting the license was, but I'm happy I won't have to do it again for at least 3 years. I've also heard you can go to the central police station instead of the driving center to do this, but you have to bring a photo for the license with you (please make sure it's the right size and layout) and it can take up to 2 months to receive your new license in the mail. It's better to go to a driving center if possible.