Hawker food in Japan

Was at the Japanese hawker center this morning for early lunch. The food is good and cheap. It is self-service and payment is made through machine.The beef rice which is very delicious cost S$3 and the ramen is S$4. The stalls are open only on every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Sale of apartments in southern Japan

The above new apartments are for sale in Kitakyushu, southern Japan. The are a mere 3 minute walk to a train station. The prices range from 25 million Yen (S$312,000) to 32 million Yen (S$400,000). The exchange rate is 1,000 Yen to S$12.50. These apartments are sitting on freehold land.
The district of these apartments is equivalent to Singapore's Orchard Road area.

Brunch with miso prawn soup

We didn't want to waste yesterday's prawn heads and so used them for the miso soup. The taste is incredibly tasty and may try to cook prawn mee.

Eating prawns and sukiyaki beef at home

Food stuff is rather inexpensive in Japan. The 304 gm of thinly sliced beef is S$ 6.50. Nine pieces of big fresh prawns (fit to eat as sashimi) is $7. We cooked the beef in sukiyaki style with leek and cabbage. The prawns were dipped in hot boiling water for a few seconds. We each had the above with 2 bowls of Japanese rice.

Persimmon aka Kaki in Japan

Persimmon is an autumn fruit. In Japan, it is called kaki.It is sweet and certain types like the bitter ones could be hung and dried (3 weeks). I prefer the dried persimmon which taste like dried dates. It contains lots of vitamin C and is a good fibre fruit.

Chilli padi and spring onions

Besides other plants we also grow chilli padi and spring onions. Actually I was surprised to discover that chilli padi could grow in autumn. All along I thought it was a summer plant.

A little humor won't hurt

Early X'mas shopping in Japan

It is still early for Christmas but the shops have started selling goods at discount rate. I was at the above shopping center and was quite surprise to have found a Daiso discount shop selling most items at 100 Yen which is equivalent to S$1.20.
I got a pair of shoes at 1,990 Yen ($24) from a shop selling sports items. The original price was 4,990 Yen (a discount of almost 3,000 Yen or $36).
Shopping in Japan is fun because the malls are huge and not as crowded with people as in Singapore. Besides, there are ample car parking lots and are free of charge.

Harvesting daikon

We harvested 5 pieces of daikon (radish) from our garden.
This type of daikon is used for the "chye tai kueh" or fried carrot cake in SG. We gave away 4 to friends and kept one for ourselves. Daikon is usually grown in cool weather like now (autumn) whereby the temperature ranges from 12c to 16c.
The potatoes will be harvested during the colder months in January and February.

Teaching English

The planning and murder of Saudi journalist

Best goalkeeper in the world

Lady abused for doing her job

The lady was a beer promoter. She was verbally abused by a man....read here

Hijacked crew Philip has retired

Philip was the crew  thrown out of the SQ hijacked aircraft in 1991. He survived the terrible ordeal and 27 years later (a few days ago) retired as an IFM after 40 years of flying with SIA.

Dining in Tokyo Bus

Penalty for parking in Japan

We were shocked to find a ticket on our car windscreen. A fine of about S$200 was imposed on us for parking in front of our friend's house for 20 minutes. It was weird because there was no "No Parking' sign or double yellow line etc on the road. Our vehicle did not in any way obstruct the traffic. In fact, it was a deserted area with hardly any traffic except for the residents' vehicles. This is Japan for us!

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