Banana Kit Kat

One of my students went back to Japan to take part in a festival to celebrate adulthood.  It is a wonderful event with beautiful kimono.  I saw it a couple of times in Japan and always thought it was spectacular–at least from a fashion point of view.

As for me, she was kind enough to bring some snacks back for me. I was expecting the Tirol chocolate which I love, but instead was given a Banana Kit Kat, Tokyo Banana, and another coffee flavoured sponge treat which I dispatched too quickly to get the name of.

While I thought the two spongy ones would be quite interesting, it was the Banana Kit Kat which stole the show. After my experience with Green Tea Kit Kats, I expected the bar to be yellow.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was not.  It didn’t have the exact easy break sides I have come to associate with a Kit Kat, but it wasn’t exactly hard to split.

It won’t replace Green Tea Kit Kat as my favourite, but I will definitely keep a lookout for it whenever I am in Japan again.

A Kick Out Of Bananas

I have written before about gifts my students have given me. Today is another one of those situations, but with a little twist.  You see, usually the students bring things from their country.  These can be folk crafts, snacks, post cards, key chains, and alcohol–yes, I saved that one for last on purpose.

In today’s case, my student brought me something from their country that they bought here. They had gone shopping to a Korean grocery store and came across Banana Kick.  I mentioned this once when showing them a video of kydeanderic who are two jvloggers.  In the video, Kyde and Eric are visiting Korea town in Tokyo and Kyde heaps a lot of praise on this particular snack.  If you’ve watched these videos, you would take her food advice pretty seriously.  She knows her stuff.

So, if you’re keeping score, that means that

• My student actually paid attention to something I said.
• My student remembered something I said.
• My student thought of me when they were shopping for food–if I am shopping for food, I am most likely thinking about myself and my grumbling stomach.
• My student wanted to do something nice for me.

All in all, a pretty easy choice for Today’s Perfect Moment.

By the way, I have always found banana to be a hard flavour to replicate without tasting like chemicals. While I cannot say there was no taste of chemicals, at the very least, this did actually taste like bananas.  The students disagreed.  I had to fail them for that.

A Book From My Last Vacation

On my last trip to Vietnam, on the last real day of being there, I toured the War Remnants Museum.  I was pretty harrowing and ….. Anyway, I ended up going to a bunch of giftshops they had set up next to some of the prison cells (a generous word.  Prison Hells would be better…..again, harrowing).  I bought some stamps (for me) a cup (for my sister) and some other trinkets.  While leaving I noticed a bunch of English books wrapped in plastic on the outside wall of the shop.  As one of the tour people accompanied me (the other being down with an illness, and the other touring the VC tunnels out in Cu Chi) mentioned that one of the books was on the recommended reading list for the trip.  Silly me.  I didn’t know there was a recommended reading list (maybe he got it from a guidebook–they’ve always got reading lists).  He said it was a pretty good yarn and fit in well with our Exodus cycling tour.  So I bought it.

I put the book under the piles of postcards I bought (meaning to keep for myself and not give away–how would I ever get such perfect shots again)–and forgot about it. It was still in the plastic seven and a half months later.

Having missed the library run a couple of weeks ago (they close on Sundays) I decided to give it a look.  It was probably the right idea since I needed a bit of distance from the whole thing to give it perspective. If I tried to read it on the plane, I probably wouldn’t have gotten very far.

The story was a good one and well written. It nicely oscillated between the past and the present, as well as Vietnam and America. I was just a child when the boat people made landfall, and I do not remember anything about it.   I also live far from the west coast so I have no knowledge of Canada’s reactions–I am a little nervous that we probably didn’t do enough to help settle people who were obviously fleeing something terrible. Maybe I can find a Canadian story. Please forward me any recommendations.

I definitely recommend the book. It wasn’t an easy read, but a satisfying one. That was partly because of the subject matter (family histories and family closets are difficult to reconcile) and party because of the way the book was published. The typeface or the font or the spacing (something) was rather dense and could probably only get through 20 pages a commute. They probably equalled 60 pages of some of the popular books I read, but I certainly didn’t sail through the book.

Again, any recommendations would be nice.

Are These Popular Again?

When I was young, the most popular souvenir seemed to be the Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt. I saw them everywhere.  I saw them on old people, young people, men, women, and children. The locations varied from London and Paris to Istanbul and Perth.  The first one I had was one from Honolulu.

My thoughts on whether this was the mark of a traveler or tourist varied from day to day, but that didn’t stop me from wanting one. I regret not getting one from the Osaka location.  However, I rarely ever went there and would probably consider Murphy’s in Shinsaibashi my Japanese bar.

Then, for a while, I stopped seeing them. I had a theory about this, and maybe some of you out there can back me up on this one.  I think the cool tourist souvenir became the Starbucks mug or the Starbucks tumbler.  I saw quite a few people collect these things. I even briefly considered getting one when one of the people on the trip dragged me into a Starbucks in Vietnam.  I declined when I realized that I was in a coffee producing country and the locals probably had the whole thing covered.

Again, that’s just a theory. Maybe lots of people are still buying those T-shirts and maybe someone’s shelf is not full of mugs from that chain.

If you know, please let me know.

I should note that the Hard Rock in Toronto is now closed.  It was the first one in North America and it is gone–a victim of spiraling real estate costs and a lack of rent control.  We also lost the House of Lords–the only place to get a true rocker hair cut in the city.

I hadn’t thought of this theory for a while, but today my student came dressed in the Hard Rock T-shirt. Since we were doing a mock exam, I had time to think about the theory.  I am not sure this is a Perfect Moment, but it sort of fits in with the nostalgia and the urge to travel that I have been feeling lately.

 

Knocking Things Off My To-Do List

My to do list is full of a lot of mundane things. Little things need fixing, things need sorting, things need tidying….pretty much like anyone else’s list.  And much like anyone else, I am fantastic at not getting things checked off that list.

Today’s Perfect Moment is getting one of those things checked off the list.

Last year, I took two cycling vacations. I came back with a lot of memories and a bunch of stuff I meant to put in a scrapbook.  I managed to get most of the stuff sorted from the first trip…but not everything.  Then I totally forgot to do anything with the second batch of stuff.

On both trips, I updated my blog and I posted a bunch of pictures to facebook. On the second trip I put more emphasis on the blog than writing down what happened in the scrapbook.  This was better for the blog, but who knows if I will access it as often as I might pick up the book and leaf through it.

I can’t say it is a work of art. I am not really good at scrapbooking and a lot of what I put in there is a little banal.  I stuck in menus from the flight, business cards, menus and disposable maps.  My writing….when scrawl seems to sum it up best.

I am glad it is done and many of the things from the trip are in one compact place.

Of course, I have other souvenirs. I have postcards that I didn’t send.  I have many hundreds of pictures (which I am still posting to Instagram) , full colour maps, an amazing book of photographs, magnets, art for my walls, and an awesome box to hold my chopsticks.

What kinds of things or ways do you keep mementos from your trip?