Category: Miscellaneous

Yamagata Gotochi

September 17, 2021

Recently a secret source in Japan – let’s call her AC – sent me a wonderful set of four postcards. Not just any postcards; she sent me Gotochi, which are special regional postcards made by the Japanese postal service and only sold in the region depicted on the card.

AC lives in Yamagata prefecture (or county), about 350 km north of Tokyo, so these cards all feature things that Yamagata is known for. I know absolutely nothing at all about Yamagata, and can’t read the Japanese on the back of the postcards, so let’s see if we can learn something together based on the card images!

This one is easy: apparently Yamagata is known for cherries! In fact a quick search online reveals that about 70% of all cherries consumed in Japan are grown in Yamagata. The cherry crops include some very high end ones that sell for over US$30 per pound (that’s about $65/kilo) and apparently some farms hire security to stop the cherries from being stolen by thieves! I’m not a big cherry fan, but if I visited Yamagata I’m sure I’d try some.

This is a shogi piece, which is from a Japanese game often called ‘Japanese Chess’ (although the two are only slightly related). Traditionally made of wood, the best shogi boards and pieces are made in a city in Yamagata called Tendo, which is famous throughout Japan for its rich shogi history. I’ve never played shogi but I’m probably at the sub-grandmaster level at chess so one of this days I should visit Tendo and impress the locals…

This depicts the Hanagasa Matsuri, which is a traditional festival held in the city of Yamagata. Over ten thousand brightly dressed dancers participate and it’s a major event and tourist attraction. It looks beautiful too; here’s a photo:

Apparently it celebrates flowers and anyone can join. I wonder if AC has ever danced in it?

I love festivals in Japan, although we’ve seen a few small ones we’ve never been lucky enough to witness anything like this. It would be wonderful to visit a big festival one day 🙂

This one took a bit of research. I first assumed it was some sort of meatball-on-a-stick, but eventually (after searching for traditional foods) discovered this shows tama konyakku which are balls of steamed konjac often served with soy sauce or mustard. It seems this is a popular ‘fast food’ of the area; basically a hot dog equivalent, and one (translated) source I found says they are ‘great for female’! Gourmet as I am, I’d keep a wide berth from these, but I like the card anyway!

Incidentally konjac is not considered a food in some countries, including Australia, because it can be difficult to digest. If you visit Yamagata, you probably should try tama konyakku in moderation 🙂

Aren’t these Gotochi great?!? There big and bold and colorful and there’s hundreds of them since each prefecture has (or has had) many different ones. In fact I found no less than 10 different ones from Yamagata alone, and mysteriously some of the ones AC sent me are apparently no longer available. I hope she didn’t send me her own prized copies!

I can’t wait to return to Japan and buy Gotochi myself from all the places I visit. In the meantime a big thanks to AC for these examples. I love them!

Ramen 10: I’m Not Stopping!

September 12, 2021

I’m not reviewing ramen today, just showing off a recent purchase. Specifically this:

It’s a noodle stopper, which is a figurine designed to help keep the top on cup noodles while they steep. Most of us probably use a fork or plate or some other device, but now you can use a cute figurine:

Yes this is a real figure designed for this use. They are made by the Japanese company Furyu mostly as UFO Catcher prizes, although the days you can just buy them on amazon. Mine is Hatsune Miku in a cherry blossom outfit, and I’m astonished at the sculpting and paint job considering how inexpensive she was ($20)! She also sits on the noodles very well and keeps the top nice and sealed while the hot water does its job.

Of course since I don’t want to damage her I won’t actually be using her for this purpose, and instead she’ll sit happily on a ledge in my office to remind that a piping hot cup of noodles is only a few steps away:

Noodle stoppers: an essential tool for the cupnoodologist! 🙂

Let’s Trade Cards (Part 5)!

September 11, 2021

I never imagined that box of random trading card packs I received for my birthday would last six months but here we are. Let’s open the final six packs…

Thunderbirds (2004) was a forgettable live-action remake of the classic 1960s marionette series (directed by Jonathan Frakes!) but the card set confusingly calls it Thunderbirds Are Go which was actually the name of the 1960s film, 1982 Japanese anime series and 2010 _and_ 2015 TV remakes. These cards are about as uninspired as you can imagine: just movie stills with no chase cards. I bet this set was in the budget bin upon release!

When you think of topics of interest to trading card collectors, does The Royal Family (1993) come to mind? This is a somewhat irreverent set showcasing pictures of everyone’s favourite monarchy, with a focus on Diana who was of course still alive when these came out. The cards are fairly well done, with lots of info on the back, and apparently the set features a ‘secret’ scratch off card with a ‘slightly risqué’ picture of Sarah Ferguson on it!

I wouldn’t call Generation Extreme (1994) cards non-sports, but whoever packed the box does so oh well. This is a terminally boring set with photos of ‘extreme sports dudes’ from the oh-so cool early 1990s. Remember when this stuff was all over MTV? I suppose these cards were of interest to the guys featured on them, but for everyone else this set is just recycling material.

Fun fact: I’ve always loved the song Iron Lion Zion posthumously released by Bob Marley but I’ve never known much about the guy himself. This set from 1996 attempts to remedy that, with an encyclopedic amount of info about the man and his life and beautifully produced cards. The set has loads of chase cards as well, including embossed cards and fantasy art versions of the singer painted by Ken Kelly! I was impressed with these cards and I imagine a Marley fan would have been over the moon.

Ah yes, the beloved film Bingo (1991)! I’ve never heard of it, and I doubt many have. Weirdly these are wax-packed (like early 1980s sets) despite being released in 1991, and most of the images on the cards I got are studio shots of the dog in weird outfits/poses. This is an awful set, that I doubt ever had an audience.

Back in the pre-copyright strike glory days of the internet I watched several entire series on YouTube. One of them was the 1970 British series UFO about a covert government agency tasked with stopping an alien invasion. This was – still is – ahead of it’s time and in my opinion remains one of the best sci-fi tv series ever made. This card set from 2004 includes beautifully produced cards on thick card stock and seems to be a precursor of the higher-end collectors series of today. Of all the packs I opened in this box, this is the one I wish I had more of!

And that’s it: every pack has now been opened and showcased here. And yet in the six months it has taken I have obtained a few more packs of cards from other series. Who knows, maybe I’ll continue this series at some point in the future?

Robot Claw