The Poptart Alternative in Japan

Living in Japan we have discovered Asahi Food Balance Up Cream biscuit sandwiches that resemble the flavors of Poptarts in America. I like them so much, I decided to write a post about the different flavors and what I believe they taste like. They come in a package with two separately sealed packages with two small puffed cream filled granola biscuit sandwiches. They are probably 1″ x 2″ x.25″ big. Asahi Food sells just the granola as well, but Japan really seems to like cream puffed foods. Even peanut butter here (aside from a jar of Skippy peanut butter) is actually just really whipped peanut cream, it is kind of gross especially if you have grown to love the dense texture and flavor of peanut butter. Anyways, the Poptart like granola sandwiches are sold in 7 different flavors, I believe. There is a Fruits and Granola, Cream Cheese, Maple Nuts & Granola, Blueberry, Chocolate, Strawberry?, and Mocha flavored biscuit sandwiches.

The Fruits and Granola Japanese sandwich snack tastes like a lemon cream sandwich cookie.

The Cream Cheese flavored Japanese granola cracker puffed creme sandwiches taste like cheese sandwich crackers.

The Japanese Maple Nuts & Granola snack tastes similar to the Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Pop Tarts.

The blueberry creme puffed granola cracker sandwich tastes like a blueberry flavored Poptart, simple as that.

The Chocolate Asahi Food Balance Up Cream granola biscuit sandwiches are similar to double fudge Pop Tarts.

I’m not exactly sure what the flavor of the pink colored cream puff Asahi Foods granola sandwich is, whether it is Strawberry or Raspberry? I just assume Strawberry since it is a very popular flavor in Japan, however, I have not even seen this flavor personally. I really look forward to finding it and trying it, but for now, it is only a picture I found when looking for pictures of the other flavors.

And last, the Mocha flavored biscuit sandwiches. Although I have definitely seen this flavor anywhere Asahi Food Sandwich snacks can be found, but I have yet to try the Mocha flavored snack yet.

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Originally From: Nihon Scope

Japanese Trains - A Few Things You Might See

A Few Interesting Things You Might See Happen on a Japanese Train Ride

Over the last couple weeks, my wife and I have road the trains almost everyday, and for the most part most of the Japanese seem to follow the etiquette rules set by society, BUT every single day I see some Japanese breaking these rules, and at times entire train cars ignore it, people will eat, talk on phones and talk loudly, but to be fair when it’s pact in the mornings and coming home for the day it’s a bit more strict. It’s like if a few people ignore the etiquette it’s bad etiquette but if a bunch do it, it’s okay. Which seems about right given when we went to our class orientation they told us that you’re not suppose to ride your bike on the other side of the going into traffic and you’re not suppose to ride a bike with an umbrella in your hand while it’s raining, BUT… surprise surprise, I’ve seen more Japanese breaking these rules then I see following them.

So why shouldn’t the trains be the same way, right? But besides breaking some etiquette rules, I saw something, sort of funny, but a bit of a pain for a lot of riders on the trains. I call it the “Ultimate Japanese Seat Block Maneuver”. It happens all throughout the train, day in and day out at all times of the day no matter if the train car is packed! It’s a naturally understood phenomena that happens on the train where two Japanese will sit in a way where it discourages others that want to sit down because of having to be rude and asking them to move.

Another thing that I noticed quite a bit is book covers, now I’ve heard of this before but I got my first picture of someone reading most likely some kind of interesting topic that he didn’t want anyone else to know about, I’m sure most of the women are reading their romance novels and they’d rather not show it off. Perhaps it’s good etiquette? Would I do it, probably not.

So there you have it a bit more interesting facts about train riding that you may or may not have known about.

-Nihon Scope

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Difference Between - To Give Birth, To Be Born & Birthplace in Japanese

An Odd Coincidence – A Japanese Lesson About Birth on Easter.

In light of the Easter holiday I find this lesson to be very interesting, because the day I finally decide to get these three words straightened in my mind it falls on Easter, and what’s more appropriate then words revolving around birth?

So I’ve been getting these words on WaniKani.com for awhile now and I’ll start to understand them then… NOPE, I’ll see one and think it’s the other and since I’ve not had any real reason to use these words with anyone or even myself or my wife they quickly get mixed up, so here is an attempt to make sure that they can be remembered moving into the future. Perhaps I’ll have more opportunities to use these words since I now live in Japan, but I got to know them first :).

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1. UMU – 生むーうむ：To Give Birth



2. UMARE – 生まれーうまれ：Birthplace



3. UMARERU – 生まれるーうまれる：To Be Born

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So the best way to remember UMU is by adding a bit more to it to remember it.

By the time you are going to give birth, it’s too late to turn back, U MUst be ready to give birth, you don’t have a choice.

To remember UMARE is by changing it a bit to be pronounce in English U-MAR-E

Your birthplace will usually dictate where YOU get (U) MARRIED (MA-RE) at.

UMARERU is a fun one to remember, but you got to break it up a bit. Think of the famous giraffe that was pregnant forever and what the mother was constantly thinking.

UM…? ARE YOU (UM… ARE (/R) U) ever going to be born?

---

Perhaps these are not the very best ways for you to remember how to think of these. If these don’t sit, then take a couple minutes and think of some ways to remember these on your own. The best way to remember anything in a new language is to do space repetition and to create stories around the words. They work even if you have to break the rules of the language at times just to remember the spelling/word. Click here to check out my favorite programs online for free.

-Nihon Scope

 

 

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Hidden Costs of Traveling 5 Tips to Keep in Mind

Getting Cheap Tickets is Nice But Are They Really Cheap?

If you’re thinking of moving to Japan (or anywhere across the globe) for school or work or even just to travel then there is somethings you should know. If you are traveling to go to school or for work you’re most likely going to try to pack everything you can think of when moving and for the most part it’s a good idea. But you might want to know some secrets of cheap flights to places like Japan.

My wife and I recently just made it to Japan and we flew from Colorado DIA to LAX (Los Angeles) and then LAX to TIA Taipei (Taiwan) then Taipei to FUK Fukuoka, Japan. Thing is we started off with a cheapo flight by Frontier Airlines in the states to travel to LAX we then had to recheck our baggage before getting back on the plane because of a 13 hour layover. Then we traveled to Taiwan by China Airlines and then again took China Airlines to Fukuoka.

So here is where the first step comes in:

1. DON’T TRUST YOUR TRAVEL AGENCY IF IT’S PURELY AN ONLINE PURCHASE

Why? Well we quickly found out, yes they did note that bags shouldn’t be over 50 pounds and we’ll get to that a bit more here in a second, but you need to CALL your airline you are using to make sure how many bags you can check on and how many personal and carry on items are allowed before fees. We used a service called Kiwi and they were totally wrong! We could only have 1 single carry on, the e-ticket from Kiwi and information they gave us said we could have a checked bag, 1 personal item and a carry on. Well needless to say that $200 ticket for both of us was jacked up to $290 for our carry on bags and checked bags.

It would have only been $215 but we were over 7 pounds on one bag… So that bumped us up $75 just for that bag. So here comes tip number 2.

2. Make sure you have an accurate scale at your home so you can weigh your bags before getting to the airport. So you may be stuck with a $100-$200 fee to check bags, but at least you can stay under the radar of the $75 over weight bag fee!

So as you can guess, you do NEED things going half way across the world and the airlines take advantage of that, so don’t be fooled by cheap prices. For those going to Japan, A LOT of things can be repurchased for peanuts at local 100 yen shops.

3. Take note of tip 1 again, because once we got to LAX and had to recheck our bags we would have had to pay for 4 different bags, even carry on.

4. Make sure you take carry on baggage into mind because the weight for each carry on can change from airlines to airlines even if you just carried on that baggage from another airlines.

This happened when getting checked in to China Airlines. Each carry on turned into a checked bag, and thankfully the man we checked out with on China Airlines was nice enough to give us a pass on all of them, otherwise it would have been another $300 for all our bags even though a few of them were carry on bags from before.

So we paid around $1,300 for both tickets when we initially purchased it. It would have quickly been pushed up to $2000 for our tickets after baggage fees if we were to have to pay all the fees.

5. The best bet sometimes is to calculate if it could be cheaper to pay for less flights and checking of baggage. Not only will you save money or maybe just break even, but you’ll have to worry less about rechecking bags in other airports, which makes flying a lot less stressful.

-Nihon Scope

PS:

Bonus tip #6: Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to pack. Having to pack to travel across the world is stressful no matter when you do it, but it’s worse if you do it the night before you’re leaving.

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Originally From: Nihon Scope