News items from NihonHacks

 Just a reminder that banks close for New Years holidays.  Don’t get caught without cash.  Grab a few extra ichimans today while you still can.  Also, various stores will close and others will change their opening/closing times.  If you need to, stock up on things like food, diapers, etc.

Also, be on the look out for New Years’ fukubukoro and get a LOT of stuff for CHEAP.  Seriously, if you don’t know what these lucky bags are, check the link.  Don’t miss it!  Even Mister Donut has fukubukuros (thanks Ken Y-N from whatjapanthinks!).

I also spotted Hassakus in the grocery store today.  This is my favorite Japanese fruit, so if you haven’t tried them yet, check it out.

Also, a request. I got an email recently that said this:

Hey Thomas,
I’m new to Japan and I’ve really been enjoying your site, though the shoes tip didn’t quite work for me…yet. I’m sure my Japanese isn’t good enough to truly work that one out. Anyways, I’ve been told that the day after New Years (or maybe New Years day) there are some great sales. I read your post on fukubukuro, but it doesn’t really describe the same phenomenon. This was described to be as the “Japanese Black Friday.” Being new here, we could really use some deals, but can’t quite read the websites well enough for info. I would really appreciate a post on this topic, I’m sure you’d have some great input. To give you an idea, we’re looking for small appliances; denki pot, rice cooker, vacuum, plasma TV, etc. ;) Also, we need some clothes, so basically ANY info you can provide will be beneficial. Thanks and have a great New Years!
Matt

[ed: To clarify: Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is the busiest shopping day of the year in America. Everybody has the day off and all the stores have big sales.]

Does anybody know anything about this? I don’t shop much, so I don’t know anything about it. If you do, please leave a comment and help us out!

Jalepeno peppers are my favorite sandwich condiment.  Whenever I’d go to Subway back in Texas, I’d always have them pile on the jalepenos.  Sadly, Subway here in Japan doesn’t offer jalepenos (at least not any Subway near me!).  My import store doesn’t even sell them!  What can I do?

Mos Burger.

Not only is Mos Burger the best fast-food hamburger place around, not only does it have the best onion rings known to man, but they also have jalepenos!  If you order a Spicy Mos Burger, the “Spicy” you taste comes from chopped jalepenos that they stick in your burger sauce blap stuff.  Delicious! Even without the tilde.

If you like jalepenos, go to Mos Burger.

Do you have any fast food secrets?  Let me know in the comments!

If you were to look out my apartment window, this is what you’d see:

Yes, that’s right.  The apartment across the street!   Not very exciting.  But if you look a little to the left, you’ll see this:

Some more apartments, some cars, a pair of rice fields and… tsurushi-gaki!

So wait, what’s tsurushi-gaki?  I’ll tell you.

Japan has these fruits called “kaki“.  They have an English name too, persimmon, so some of you may know what they are.  I never saw one back in Texas so they were new to me.  Anyway, people around here grow them and so a lot of the time I’ll get them as gifts.  One problem though: I don’t like them!   The texture, the taste, the skin, the seeds.   Not my favorite fruit.  But there’s something magical you can do to them to make them taste awesome.  Turn them into tsurushi-gaki!

The word tsurushi-gaki comes from the verb 吊るす (tsurusu) which means “to hang, to suspend”, and the word 柿 (kaki) which is the fruit.  tsurushi-gakis are also called hoshi-gaki, from the verb 干す (hosu) “to hang outside”. (umeboshi gets its name from this too).

Anyway, tsurushi-gakis are just kakis left hanging outside for a while until they become dried kakis.  And they are delicious.  The perfect Christmas treat in Japan!  Here’s how to make them:

1. Get some kaki and get some string - sometimes they sell tsurushi-gaki kits like this one, but you can also just buy the individual fruits.

   

2. Peel the kaki, or get someone you love to do it for you while you take a picture.

   

3. Attach the kaki to your string. This can be tricky if you bought kaki that don’t have their stems intact. Be creative.

   

4. When you finish attaching all of your kakis, hold the string up and admire your work.

   

5. Hang your kakis outside.

   

6. Wait about one or two months. If it rains really hard, you might want to bring them in temporarily so they won’t get soaked and spoil. When they are done they should look something like this:

   

7. Enjoy your tsurushi-gakis. Eat it as is, add it to your cereal, whatever. Mmmmmm.. Delicious!  Even more delicious by the Christmas tree.

   

Kaki usually show up in stores around mid-fall and continue on into the winter. If you get them early enough, you can put them out and they will be ready just in time for Christmas (too late now, I know, sorry. But act now and you can have tsurushi-gakis for Setsubun!). We make these every year and for me it’s become one my images of Christmas in Japan (though Japanese people associate them more with New Years, but whatever).

Enjoy!

Do you have a tip for making cool Japanese food snacks?  Let me know!

I checked the front page today and saw this:

Wow! 1000 subscribers! I never imagined I would reach so many people, especially not this quickly. Thank you everybody for your continued support! I love you guys.

Now I have a favor to ask. Think of it as a Christmas present or a non-denominational winter gift or something. Let’s spread the word! Please tell someone you know (preferably an English-speaking foreigner living in Japan) about Nihonhacks. More readers means more potential hacks, which means everyone benefits! お願いします！

Here’s to 2000!

Shane over at The Nihon Sun is giving away a free book. In her words:

If you have ever been to a Japanese Game Center or want to learn more about the gaming scene in Japan then you need to read Arcade Mania!, The Turbo Charged World of Japan’s Game Centers.

The book is filled with with great graphics and information about game centers, their popularity and history as well as interviews with game designers and top players in Japan. Written by Brian Ashcroft with Jean Snow, the book is as fun to read as it is to visit a game center in Japan and you can win a copy today!

The Nihon Sun, an online magazine covering Japanese travel & culture, is offering readers a chance to win a copy of this book. All you need to do is read the review of Arcade Mania! and answer a couple of fun arcade trivia questions from the book in order to enter.

Once again:

Review: click here.

Contest Details: click here

Now go win yourself a free book!

Are you holding a contest/giveaway on your Japan-themed blog?  If so, drop me a line and I can help spread the word.

Reader Bob sends in this delicious hack:

Thomas,

I enjoy your nihonhacks site and I wish it had been available to us when we lived in Tokyo from 1988 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 1999.

Another use for leftover rice that we enjoy is to make rice cakes for breakfast the next morning. Mix the rice with enough eggs to make a paste about the consistency of pancake batter. You can add a dash of vanilla extract but it’s not necessary. Then fry pancake size portions just like you would make pancakes: a few minutes on one side then turn it over and a few minutes on the other side. Don’t stir it up like you do for fried rice. Use a moderate to low heat to cook the rice mixture through without burning the surface. Then serve with butter and maple syrup, just like pancakes. A few rashers of bacon on the side is nice, too.

I learned this from my mother who used up leftover rice this way, but I’ve never seen this anywhere else. Hope you and your readers enjoy.

These sound so delicious that I’m going to cook some up this weekend, even if I have to use fresh rice. Thanks Bob!

Do you have any food saving tips? Send them in!

A blog I subscribe to, David Goldsworthy’s Indonesia Blog, has a cool post about curing two kinds of burns: skin burns and the burns you get from eating spicy food.

1. To cure skin burns, put toothpaste on them (the white kind) and wait 20 minutes. No blisters.
2. If you eat something spicy and its too much, cure the burning sensation with boiling (or almost boiling) water.

Here’s the original post with more details: Toothpaste For Burnt Fingers; Boiling Water For a Hot Tongue Please visit the blog. It’s a good one! It has cool posts and pictures like this one about Java Coffee.

Do you have any pain remedies you’d like to share? Post them in the comments.

Hacks from the Past is a series of posts that I will do monthly that will go over past hacks so that new readers don’t have to bother digging through the archives.

Here are December’s Hacks from the Past:

1. How to find a Christmas Tree in Japan Part 1 - Name says it all. Are you celebrating Christmas? Want to know where to get a tree? Read here.
2. How to find a Christmas Tree in Japan Part 2 - Same as above, but more options.
3. Poor Man’s Tea: Mugicha - Don’t buy big tea jugs from the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Buy from the tea bag aisle and save lots of yen

That’s all. Last December was a bit slow! Next year won’t be though. I’m working hard this time! If you have any December Holiday Hacks, please don’t hesitate to send them in!

Koichi from tofugu sends in this awesome tip:

How’ve you been doing lately? This is Koichi from Tofugu. Thank you for adding me to the “Hacks from the Past” roundup :) I’ve been enjoying the furigana extension from Open Office as well - I think I’ll do a writeup on that (with source, of course~)

Anyways, I’ve got a minor novel for you, here :P

Right now, working at eduFire.com (a website that does live learning via webcam…super slick), and I wanted to tell you about something that I thought could be interesting for your readers. Of course, that’s something you would have to decide on your own :)

eduFire is ramping up to a subscription program for it’s Japanese classes section. This would mean that for a certain amount of money each month (we’re estimating $30-$40, but this hasn’t been decided yet), users can attend as many group lessons as they want, with up to 99 students per class. I’ve taught a few lessons, and they’re so much fun, but people learn a lot too.

For the next month or so, though, the Japanese teachers who have signed up for our site are teaching Japanese Classes, and eduFire is paying them, which means all the Japanese classes are 100% free for students. There are currently 39 classes available, many of which repeat (so there’s really a ton more than that).

I also wrote an article about it, here:
39 Free Japanese Courses You Should Sign Up For

Well, that’s my spiel. Of course, it’s totally up to you as to whether you think your readers might find it interesting. I think it’s a ridiculously good deal, and am sooo excited.

Just to clarify, eduFire classes are live with the teacher via webcam, i.e. these aren’t prerecorded lessons that sit on the web for years collecting dust. You’ll be one-on-one (or group-on-one) with a teacher who will give you individual (or group) attention. It looks like there are 39 different Japanese classes available and you can attend as many as you want for free for the next month or so. Can’t beat that price!

Thanks koichi!

For those of you taking the JLPT tomorrow, good luck!  Let’s all 合格 this thing!

Don’t forget to bring:

1. Your test voucher
2. Pencils
3. ID (Gaijin card or passport)
4. Your lunch
5. Watch
6. Study books to cram in between test sections

Jaered sends in a link to a site called Lang-8.  In his words:

Hi Thomas,

I’ve been reading your blog for a little while, and it’s really great as someone who is interested in Japan :) Keep it up!

I work at a website called lang-8, which is a website where users can write journal entries in the language that they are learning, and then get it corrected by someone who is native in that language. Everyone helps each other by correcting each others journal entries, and everyone learns! Maybe you would be interested in trying it out and taking a look? I also think it might be interesting for your readers as well, but of course, that’s up to you :) Please let me know if you have any questions!

http://www.lang-8.com

Anyways, keep up the good work! I’m enjoying your blog!

From the front page of lang-8, this is how it works:

1. You write journal entries in your target language (Japanese for must of us).
2. Native (Japanese) speakers correct your journal entries.
3. You correct journal entries of other users studying your language.

It really works too. I’ve had a lang-8 account for a while, and every journal entry I’ve ever written has been read and corrected for me quickly. Both for Japanese (popular language) and Swedish (somewhat obscure). If you want to improve your Japanese skills and make native-speaking friends in the process, give it a try!

Thanks Jaered!

Do you know of any websites geared towards Japanese learners, or foreign language learners in general? Post them up in the comments!

Here are some other great ideas on how to make old crappy rice good.

1. Fried Rice. A reader named Chesu explains:
   

   I fry my leftover rice. Cold, dry rice is perfect for fried rice, as it more readily absorbs the chicken stock, soy sauce, and whatever else you flavor it with. One cup of leftover rice becomes a very filling meal.

   Another reader, Stells, concurs:

   I always leftover rice to make bacon fried rice.

   Fry up some bacon and leftover veggies (cabbage, carrots, onion, etc), add the rice, and fry it all together. Mix in a dash of soy sauce, mirin, some spices (I like curry powder, pepper, and dried negi), and an egg (optional), and you have some bomb fried rice!

2. Rice Pudding. Reader Kirsten sends in this delicious idea:
   

   You could also make rice pudding with milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, etc. A little taste of home.

   Prasanna from India also sends in a tip about rice pudding:

   Hi
   Ohiogozaimasu.
   I am from chennai , India. I am preparing for JLPT 3 exams. happened to see ur site.

   we eat rice 365 days in a year!!!. so always there is left over rice.

   one recipe for left over rice.

   to the soft unspoiled cooked rice add water and make it to soup consistency.Boil well. Add milk , sugar, raisins, roasted cashews and some essence.
   you have a nutritious dish . It is called “keer” in India. All the best

   I’m a sweet lover, so I’m going to try this rice pudding stuff out.

Thanks for the tips!

What do you guys do with your old rice? If you have any cool ideas, send them my way!

Hacks from the Past is a series of posts that I will do monthly that will go over past hacks so that new readers don’t have to bother digging through the archives.

Here are November’s Hacks from the Past:

1. Learn Kanji with your Nintendo DS - Here is a review of a Kanji learning Nintendo DS game I did. It’s addictive and it’s still on the shelves. Check it out!
2. Find Cheese in Japan #2 - several more options for finding cheese in Japan. Must read for cheese lovers.
3. Learn Japanese with Google - How to use google search to help you with Japanese. Google images can give you 100s of pictures of your unknown words, and you can use plain old search to find millions of example sentences.
4. Faster Miso Soup Trick - a little trick to dissolve that miso faster. With pictures!
5. How to win at UFO Catcher - Learn how to win stuffed animals at UFO Catcher. Actually, this is just a link to a great tofugu article. Check it out from the original source.

That’s it! If you have any tips, send them in and you could appear in next year’s November Hacks from the Past.

Adora sends in this tip:

You can also arrange to pick up your package from Amazon.co.jp at conbini too! (You know… for purchases you don’t want your family to know about…)

I didn’t know that! This is good to know with Christmas right around the corner.

Thanks adora!

Does anybody know if its ok to ship any online orders to the konbini?

Heidi sends this useful toilet tip:

Hello!

Here is a Nihon Hack that some people may not know (if it hasn’t been posted yet). Living in Japan, one difficulty I have found is finding easy access to western style toliets. Sometimes you can end up in line waiting for a long time, or be unfortunate enough to not find a bathroom at all. the best soultion to this problem is the ever amazing convienience store (conbini)! Usually there is a clean, western style bathroom in most of your major name brand conbini’s like Lawson’s or 7/11. This has been a real life savor in busy places like Osaka!

This is pretty true. They are usually much cleaner than station toilets, and not a far walk from most stations.

And in case you didn’t know:

Also, some other good points about conbini’s is that if you have any bills to pay at all, like gas, electric, phone, or anything else, you can usually pay it at the conbini. This even includes purchases from amazon.co.jp!

Hope that helps!

It does! I often pay bills, especially shipping/handling bills, at the conbini. You should too!

Thanks Heidi!

Do you have any more convenience store tips?  Send them in!

A reader named Ben sent in this tip about adding Furigana to documents in Open Office:

I’ve been looking at your site and thought I’d send you this tip.

For those whose kanji reading ability is still low, or for those who are willing to admit that they can’t read them all, there is an Open Office extension that is very useful – all for free. To use this hack, the free Open Office software needs to be downloaded and installed. The extension is called Itadaki (a quick search will bring you to the extension project page). After installing Itadaki as well as the accompanying dictionary file, you can load a document in Japanese and have Itadaki add readings to every character in the document. Some of them will need to be corrected, but Japanese people will be impressed with your kanji ability, even if you give the wrong reading. Hope it is useful!

I did the search for you. Here’s a direct link to the extension project page: Itadaki Furigana

Thanks Ben!

Do you know of any good software extensions/plug-ins to help with Japanese on the computer? If so, send them in!

Hey, it’s still October for a couple more hours.  Better late than never I say.  Hacks from the Past is a series of posts that I will do monthly that will go over past hacks so that new readers don’t have to bother digging through the archives.  Here are 2007’s October hacks:

1. Shinmai - rice fresh from the harvest. It looks, smells and tastes better. Read how to find it in the store.
2. House brand cleaning products - Find out how to spot which house brands are good, and which ones to avoid.
3. 300 yen steaks - Learn how to get steaks and other perishable food on the cheap.
4. Akebi part 2 - I weigh in again on the crazy purple Japanese fruit.
5. Reverse zousui - zousui isn’t just for saving old rice
6. Plan your train trip online #1- for those of you who ride JR West
7. Plan your train trip online #2 - for the rest of you

If you have any tips, send them in. I have a few reader-submitted tips on the way, so stay tuned.

NinaSama sends in this tip about what to do with extra oil:

I decided to tempura batter and deep fry some ice cream with some of my Japanese friends. We had mixed results ;) But since it was one of my first times deep frying anything, I didn’t know what to do about the left over oil! My friends suggestion that I strain it and use the oil again but I didn’t want to have used oil lying around since I never plan to deep fry anything ever again! bleh.

My friend then suggested this stuff:
固めるテンプル (katameru tenpuru)
It’s very easy, you just add it to hot oil and let it sit for a while. It’ll solidify and then you can throw the whole thing out! (I’m sure you’ve heard of it before)

But, since I can’t read Japanese all too well, I went online looking for an easy explanation of what this stuff was and what I could expect from it. I ended up finding a number of websites showing how to make candles out of regular oil and this powder!

http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/sugicom/kazuo/neta/bake14.html

I haven’t tried it yet but it seems interesting. Have you ever seen something like that before?

The package might look something like this:

Thanks Nina!

NinaSama also sent in a tip request. Can anyone help?

Recently I went to Hiroshima for the Sake festival. I know that Sake can leave me with a horrible hang over the next day so I decided to check out some 飲み薬 at the conbini. I found this stuff called “gold” something-or-other ginger drink. I was told that if you drink it before drinking alcohol that you should be fine the next day. I had my doubts since the source was a bit unreliable. But I drank it and I was in fact fine. But I can’t tell if that’s just because I’m a morning person or I just drank less sake than I thought.

So, basically, I was wondering if you knew of any good Japanese drinks that help cure/prevent a hang over. Things other than just Pocari sweat and other sports drinks that my friends usually drink to try and cure themselves. They don’t really work for me :P

Thank you for reading all my long winded explanations! Thanks for writing such a great blog!!!

Anybody know any anti-hangover tips? I hardly drink at all anymore, so I have no idea! If you have any solutions, please leave a comment!

Here’s a great tip for reading Japanese websites, courtesy of Ryan Coffey and Move To Nanaimo.  It’s about a Firefox plug-in called Rikaichan.  If you use Firefox (I do), and you study Japanese (I do), then you should definately have this plug-in installed (I do).  In Ryan’s words:

Hi Thomas, (and everyone)

I think I have a hack that would be of great use to anyone living in Japan. Having spent four years there myself (that’s right, I had to leave in order to preserve my sanity) I can apreciate how hard it often is to do simple things due to cultural and linguistic differences. Well, this hack is in the linguistic category. I have found a plugin for my browser that allows me to handle kanji and new words in general, at least while online.

The plugin in question is called “Rikaichan“. I have it for firefox in both my mac and my pc. I’m not sure if it’s available for explorer and honestly I don’t care because I find explorer to be about as efficient and productive as an Eikaiwa Manager’s meeting.

Once you’ve installed Rikaichan, you’ll need to decide what language you want to use. You can have Japanese and English, Japanese and German, Japanese and French or Japanese and Russian. You’ll need to download and install the dictionary before you can use it. There is a dictionary for recognizing names as well. I suppose this is so someone named “Tanaka-San” doesn’t come up as “Rice Paddy Middle-San”. Which though a little amusing, doesn’t help us know how to address people!

Using Rikaichan is really easy. All you have to do is go to your tools menu and click on Rikaichan and then go to a Japanese site and run your mouse over some Japanese that you need help reading. It’s smart enough to recognize that certain groupings of kanji signify one word rather than a couple. It’s not perfect at this, but it does a much better job than I can!

Granted, due to the grammatical differences and what I would describe as a different “headspace” or “world view” inherent between English and Japanese, the more Japanese you already speak, the more complete your understanding of the written Japanese will be. Having said that, even if you’re still struggling trying to understand what station the place you’re trying to go to is at, or what the name of a certain store or organiation is, this plugin can help you a great deal.

Good luck!

Rikaichan is awesome and I often use it for reading random Japanese wikipedia articles (a great way to practice reading, btw).  It’s really easy to use, and pops up definitions on mouse-over.  Way faster than using a paper dictionary or even a denshi-jisho.

In case you missed the links above, you can get Rikaichan at the official site or from its Firefox add-ons page.

Check it out! Thanks Ryan!

Do you know any cool Japanese add-ons/plug-ins? If so, let me know in the comments or drop a mail to the address in the sidebar!

Another potto hack, this time for cooking eggs! Reader TedinAsia explains with a cool story:

Many many years ago when I was working in a very old trading company in Osaka, old building, smoke stained walls, etc. At 17:00 we would always have a 15min tea break with a small snack provided by the company. (This apparently was to hold us over till our 21:00 dinner break)…these were the old days.

In the summer we all got a hard boiled egg, every day on rotation it was someone’s duty to take the eggs out an hour before so they warm up and wont crack, then we would put them in a plastic bag with a little tap water then submerge the bag in the potto with the top hanging out, close up the lid and in about 20 min we had a nice hard boiled egg with our tea. 15 min gets you a nice onsen tamago. 4 Seasons and 4 different treats, Spring pickles, Summer tamago, Fall baked sweet potatos & Winter baked omochi on the gas heater. We still try to carry on the tradition with the family now on the weekends in Sendai.
Be well, br, T

Egg + plastic bag + potto = hard-boiled egg! I gotta try this at work. Thanks TedinAsia!

Other potto hacks:

• Use your potto for pasta
• Use your potto for quick veggies