I was at Ward Center to pick up something, so I stopped in at Honolulu Chocolate Company and got a large hand-rolled chocolate indulgence for a snack. I didn’t have a cooler in the car, and it was a hot afternoon, so I was worried it wouldn’t survive. It made it through with a couple of bumps, even with me making a side-trip to Ala Moana. I hid it in the center console under my refrigerator-cold water bottle, but the car interior had already cooled off. Mmm… chocolate! First thing I did when I got down to The Pit was eat the truffle (after taking this picture of course)! Continue reading ‘Honolulu Chocolate Company Hand-Rolled Chocolate Indulgence’
I recently picked up a Garmin eTrex 30 GPS. It’s a good GPS for a good price, is easy to add maps to via a microSD card “slot” (not really a slot), and uses standard AA batteries or AA-sized lithiums or rechargables. The one thing that quickly became apparent while it was knocking around in my pants cargo pocket or chest rig pouch was that the lack of any key lock feature led to a random display every time I pulled it out, or random waypoints logged or purposely recorded ones deleted. The offender in this case was the multi-function toggle on the face of the unit. This toggle makes the navigation of the non-touch-screen eTrex very easy and intuitive, but it is easily actuated when the unit is on and put inside or against something. Continue reading ‘Garmin eTrex 30 Toggle Guard’
I got a frantic email from Jeff the other week while he was away on the mainland for a conference. Apparently, he had been browsing the 1911 forums and came across this neat titanium bushing wrench and thought it was cool. I took one look and jumped in with the group order. Titanium? Great! Any little ti trinket is captivating, coming from a MTB background. Bottle opener? Sold! Titanium and bottle opener? Can’t go wrong there! M1911 bushing wrench? Bonus! The irony of a bottle opener and pistol-specific tool may be lost on non-firearm owners (and you can put it on your keyring?!)… hey, you don’t have to use them at the same time! A ¼” hex hole for insert bits? You already had me at “bottle opener” – how can you make this any better! Continue reading ‘NME Knife and Tool BWB-01T’
Stopped by Akimune-an in Shirokiya last Tuesday. The “buy two, get one free” campaign is over, but I got two an and two satsuma-imo filled taiyaki anyway. There was also cream filled, but that intuitively offends me, so I didn’t get any of those. The girl working was different than last time. It sort-of seemed like she really didn’t like her job, unlike the girl last time. The final product was just as good, but the foil wrapping was done randomly and haphazardly. This was primarily an experiment to see how the purple sweet potato filling was. Verdict – not as good as the traditional adzuki filling. Continue reading ‘Akimune-an Taiyaki – Revisited’
Nothing is as American as bacon… okay, the word “bacon” is etymologically German, and the consumptiom of belly pork goes back to Europe, but smoked, cured bacon is very American… anyway, check out this velcro-backed bacon patch! These popped up at last year’s SHOT Show, but Dave from Mojo Tactical on Sand Island just got these in. Ckucke was down there and gave me a call and asked if I wanted him to pick me up one (sorry I couldn’t make it down in person, Dave!). Of course I was in! There are two variations, “raw” with more natural, pinky and off-white (fat) colors, and “cooked” with higher contrast red and browns. I opted for the “raw”. Embroidery quality is nice. The patch measures 5″ x 1″ (12.5cm x 2.5cm), so it fits perfectly on a standard nametape of service branch velcro field. From what I can gather online, these source from edcknives-dot-com. Like bacon? Get this patch! Continue reading ‘Tactical Bacon Patch, Raw’
I’d seen it once at Don Quixote, never since. Seen the paper sign at Nijiya with nary a sign of the real thing. It was this kinda goofy fish, nabeta. It a wrasse and rumoured to be good eating. On my way home tonight I stopped in to find something to make for dinner. After looking at the sanma and opelu, what to my surprise was that the paper sign was not below an empty space, there they were, a trio of nabeta! I had to buy it, damn expensive as this sub half pounder was $9, Nijiya can be expensive. But I had to do it.
If you find yourself at the Ward Marukai anytime soon, take a look on the tables they have in the center where they highlight food items and pass out samples. I had to do a double take as I walked by, what I saw were golden turds. Now seeing little turd trinkets in a Japanese trinket store isn’t that surprising, but to have them prominently displayed on the food side seemed strange. On closer examination they look to be coin banks for the year of the dragon. The dragon was coiled into the classic inverted cone turd shape with the tail of the dragon as the tip! If I see it again I’ll remember to snap a pic.
Oops sorry, no pics. I finally got around to trying from the locally aqua farmed Kona kanpachi as sashimi. I’d earlier picked up a smaller whole one and did the black bean steamed bit and it was not bad, but not as good as Uhu for that preparation. I can hapily report that as sashimi it is wonderful. It helps that being locally sourced it is as fresh as you could get from a retailer. It is white tinged with pink flesh, a nice firmness, but smooth. Flavor is a lot like hamachi, but not as fatty. Highly recommended, 4 out of 4 sushi ninja monkeys.
If you’ve never had taiyaki before, you probably don’t know what you’re missing out on. It’s somewhere along the lines of dorayaki, manjyu, or mochi with red (adzuki) bean filling, so if you’ve experienced any of those, you sort-of get the idea. Typically, taiyaki are made with a pancake-like batter – very similar to the batter the dorayaki pancakes are made from – with a dollop of red bean filling inside of fish (tai snapper) shaped iron molds. The molds are placed over gas burners, and that cooks the batter to a crispy golden brown. Continue reading ‘Akimune-an Taiyaki’
Over the holiday season in Sapporo, I really didn’t have a whole lot of time to browse for manga and related goods. I made by with a quick stop at Toranoana and Animate on the way to the airport, and even found something interesting at the bookstore at the airport. I was in a rush, so aside from the latest volumes of things I am already reading that I managed to find in a quick eyeball of the shelves, I grabbed a couple of new titles that seemed interesting from a cursory flip-through. I still haven’t gotten a chance to fully read through these yet, but here are some quick descriptions: Continue reading ‘Manga Briefs – Winter 2011/2012 Impulse Buys!’