Strange Brews (Thursday, April 14th)

I have to tell you.  One thing I can't get enough of is canned coffee (pronounced ko-hi- in japanese).  What a marvelous invention!  Why it hasn't taken off in North America is beyond me, since we're such a coffee obsessed society.  There are a HUGE variety of different canned coffees that you can get at any of the drink vending machines everywhere.  I know you're probably thinking that canned coffee must be along the same lines as "instant coffee" in terms of quality, but I actually find it quite good!   

And amazingly enough, you can get it both hot AND cold.  You heard me, you can get HOT canned coffee from vending machines.  There's a wide variety of different brews available, some with milk and sugar, and some without.  My favorite, of course is to get it hot and black, the way I take it back home.  It's super convenient not to have to wait in line for coffee during breaks at a coffee shop, just and hit the vending machine instead... then you can return to class and nurse your heated metal can of caffeine goodness.  

Over the past week, I've had at least one a day, and I've been trying to sample a variety of different brands, so I'll profile some of the more interesting selections over the next little while.

This photo shows a coffee specially tempered with the power of fire.  I'm not sure what makes the fire used to roast these particular beans special, but it's clearly what distinguishes this product.  I must say it has a lovely rich-brewed taste, and an lingering after-burn.

This evening, I actually took a break from studying for once and went with four other people from my residence for dinner. There's only a few other people in the building right now besides those of us who went for dinner; it's basically a ghost town in here.  The Yamasa people gave me the dorm room beside some guy whose name on his door reads: "Carlos".  Weird, since the rest of our hallway is totally empty and they could have spread us out more.  I've never seen Carlos out and about, but late at night I can hear him in the next room talking loudly on the phone or skype or to himself, or whatever it is he is doing in there.  Not that it bothers me really, since I can sleep through anything.

Anyhow, the other people who went for dinner seemed nice enough and were from England, Hungary, the US and Calgary respectively.  They are, of course, in different programs and quite advanced at Japanese compared to me.  Somebody wanted to try the Italian restaurant in the nearby "Wing Town" plaza (no, I don't know why it's called "Wing Town"), and since it was close by and wouldn't take me away from studying for that long, I had no problem with the choice.  The service was pretty good, and I kinda felt bad for not tipping, as per the custom in Japan, but that's just my Western conditioning talking.