Robot Claw – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Ramen 32: This Could Be Chicken Or This Could Be Hell

September 28, 2025

It’s been six months since the last ramen review post, and just when you thought your favourite series had ended it’s time for another installment!

Good (220 Calories, 6 g fat, 1700 mg sodium)

The package of this Vietnamese chicken ramen contains this phrase: “Experiencing smooth and unique feeling with mung beans added in vermicelli.” The contents looked attractive before I cooked them, but as usual I was put off by the little packet of oil.

When I was young I used to see ‘glass noodles’ on the menu at Asian restaurants and wonder what they were. It turns out they are a type of clear noodle made from mung beans, and while sometimes also called vermicelli are obviously different from the Italian kind (and the opaque rice noodles traditionally used in pho). This is therefore not a ramen product, but I’m the owner of this blog so I’m bending the rules (and not for the first time this series)!

As you can see in the photo, the noodles were extremely transparent. Alas they looked much better than they ate since they had the texture of electrical cables and trying to bite through them only partially distracted me from the taste, which resembled sadness and dirt. This was a wretched product, and shall never cross my lips again. Score: 0/10

Hao Hao (330 Calories, 12 g fat, 1830 mg sodium)

This was another Vietnamese product, and the package proclaims ‘Tasty Vietnam’ with pride. When I opened the bag the dehydrated noodles appeared to have the flavour impregnated in them, so I was surprised to see two additional flavour packets as well.

Cooking it was easy and unremarkable, except for the almost complete lack of any smell. This carried on to the eating, since the final soup was flavourless! As such I can’t say I disliked it – the texture of the noodles for instance wasn’t disagreeable – but it was so tasteless it was hardly worth eating. A strange ramen that’s difficult to score.

Indo Mie (320 Calories, 12 g fat, 1110 mg sodium)

This one was Indonesian, and while the noodles (before cooking) seemed average, the two flavour packets – bumbu sauce and chili – alarmed me. There’s no mention at all on the packaging about this being a ‘spicy chicken’ version (a common chicken subtype I do not cover in this series) and with my low tolerance for such things I cooked it hesitantly.

You won’t be surprised to hear I couldn’t eat it. I tried one single noodle and found it so spicy that I had the usual overreaction while KLS exclaimed it wasn’t hotter than black pepper! I’ll concede the noodle diameter and texture were positives, but from the heat alone it’s an instant 0/10!

I think we’re coming up to nearly 80 unique chicken ramen reviews in nearly 5 years of this series. I hope it’s not another six months before the next installment…

Antiquing

September 20, 2025

We visited an antique show and a couple of antique shops today. I’m feeling poorly and tired since I got my Covid shot yesterday but there was a lot of cool things to see and that energized me. Here’s most of what we bought:

The left is a (wooden) box of postcards that was tied in such a way you couldn’t see the cards. For $5 I (of course) took a risk and it turned out to be a good buy since it was about 20 cards that will all be good for postcrossing. The right was a set of 12 ‘hotel’ cards that only cost a few dollars and will also be sent via postcrossing.

We bought these great stickers from an artist that specialized in dark and hellish art. If you want one of these let me know. I probably should bought a t-shirt…

More postcards, in this actual autographed cards from DJs of a NYC radio station. They seem quite old (1980s?) and the guy on the left is well-known enough to have his own Wikipedia page! I’ll be sending both of these home next time we go to NYC 🙂

This lot of old (70s and 80s) comics cost me $20, which is a good price considering they’re all in good condition and are even bagged and boarded. I think the seller just didn’t want to carry them back to his car after the show! I’m especially looking forward to reading the Godzilla ones.

This is a photo of two guys in a field – from May 1980 – that has been printed on the back to be a postcard! I wonder who these people are, and how their private photo ended up in a random box of stuff at an antique fair? Even though it’s flimsy (as old printed photos were) I’m certainly going to mail this one day and see if it arrives.

Kristin purchased this silver ‘uranium glass’ ring. The girl that crafted this gets her glass from the Czech Republic and the ring came with a black light so we could appreciate how it glows (photo on right).

It’s quite a niche: specializing in jewelry using uranium glass. And selling it outdoors on a sunny day is its own challenge, but hers was a unique display and KLS likes it even when not ‘glowing’.

Look at this weird puzzle postcard! The puzzle is inside a shallow plastic tray which is sealed in plastic and has a space to address and write on the other side. It’s hard to believe this would ever arrive safely, but of course I’m going to put that to the test.

The same guy I bought the comics from had these ten RPG handbooks, and I was interested in the GURPs Horror one. When I asked how much he said he’d sell me all ten books for $5, a deal so insane I couldn’t open my wallet fast enough. I like reading old RPG sourcebooks and these will last me years.

Last but not least is this set of 10 postcards that the seller described as ‘Chinese propaganda’. Of indeterminate age, they cost me only $2 and they are all printed on the front with the label ‘female Chinese soldiers‘. I took the seller at face value, but when I got them home and opened them I’m really wondering what these actually are.

The back of each – they are all unique – seems to have a short piece of fiction printed on it. The above screenshot is a translation and I’m sure you agree this doesn’t exactly seem like propaganda. Whatever these are, they’re strange and I love them. Want one?

I’ll end with an item I didn’t buy: this laughably long matchbook from Santa’s Workshop, which is a Christmas-themed ‘theme park’ north of hear close to Canada. Look at the length of this thing! If it was a third of the price, I probably would have bought it just because of how silly it is 🙂

As I said this was most of what we bought. I also picked up a couple of gifts that will remain secret, and KLS got some vegan cake and a cookie 🙂

New Japanese TCGs (Part 2)

September 13, 2025

It’s time for four new Japanese TCG packs I obtained on my summer trip to Japan. None of these are particularly new games, but as far as I can tell they are all the latest expansion for their respective games.

Kaiun Collosseum is a kid-friendly TCG with cute art and games that use only 10 card decks. This is the latest expansion (called ‘Great Poop Battle’?) and is one of the very inexpensive (<¥200) types of booster packs.

The cards feature colorful and cute art, but they’re somewhat flimsy and slightly curved right out of the pack. I got a single foil – the card at lower right – but the foiling effect is unremarkable. I’ve actually got a few promo cards for this game in Japanese magazines over the years and they have much prettier foiling and effects.

The cardback is ok, but overall this product betrays its (probably) budget origin and I expect this will be another game that will have a lifespan measured in a handful of years.

Staying with Bandai, here’s the latest expansion in the official Dragonball card game. This game has been going for almost a decade and while it isn’t amongst the most popular in Japan it must still have a devoted fanbase to have survived so long.

The six cards in my pack are above, and while the rare card (middle bottom) is foil the effect is subtle and unimpressive. As is typical of Bandai card games, this one has some incredibly rare and amazingly fancy cards covered in textures and multiple metallic foil effects that go for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. If you’re buying these cards just to collect them, it must be a frustrating prospect.

Here’s the cardback and a bonus card included in the pack. Feel free to use the code 🙂

While this isn’t for me – I’m not anywhere near enough of a fan of the series – this is probably fun for the diehard fans even if just to collect.

Osica is a TCG based around licensed products, and therefore would appeal to the same market as games such as Weiss and Union Divide. This was the latest expansion when I was in Japan, based on the game Atelier Ryza.

The cards are nice enough for fans, and the quality seems higher than both Bandai games. While I’ve played many Atelier games I still haven’t got to the Ryza series so I don’t know who any of these characters are. The foil card is at the lowest right, and the foil effect is so subtle it’s easy to miss.

The cardback is pretty! Probably the best yet in this series. But this is clearly a game marketed at collectors and therefore dependent on the card front design. Is it better than Weiss? I think not.

Lastly we end this post with Divine Cross, (yet) another game with cards based on licensed products. In this case the series seem to be fanservice heavy games and/or anime, and the dozens of expansions have been frequent and fairly small, with only a few dozen cards in each.

I don’t know what this expansion is based on since info is difficult to find online and my translator has trouble with the text on the front of the pack, but it looks to be a Five Nights At Freddy-like horror game (anime?) based around girls hiding from monsters. The cards are dark and frankly boring, and the foil kuchisake-onna (slit-mouth woman) card is repulsive.

If I were to base my evaluation of the game entirely on this pack it would be a strong thumbs-down, but from what I can tell cards in other expansions look wildly different and in some cases are very pretty. An unusual game, this one.