The Last Ride to the Waffle Tree

It's nearly the holidays! We celebrate in the traditional way, with home-smoked cocktails. It adds extra carcinogens to your liver-toxins. Speaking of which, let's admire Rajoo's marketing. Imagine the conversation at the slogan agency.

We also got our annual Korean socks. Avocadoes and fish ecology are stylish this year.

I have found out, in fact, that not wearing socks can be hazardous.

Barry has found the creepiest hotel art so far on his business trip.

Let's artanalyze. The bunny is holding what we hope is a hat, (or perhaps meat, or his own innards), while an apple falls nearby. Meanwhile, something not the right colour to be his tail or the tree root, slithers around the back of him, which may be the cause of his obvious surprise. Barry slept soundly beneath this.

When he got home, Barry recovered by posing for holiday pictures with the Instagram dog statues.

For Christmas I got Barry this magic egg de-sheller as seen on TV. Off-screen, it pulverizes eggs and blows bits all over the kitchen. A win!

I got Barry a coffee stencilater, and he got me a stamp. So I showed my appreciation by rejecting his breakfast offering.

We didn't get this tempting stocking stuffer.

We don't have a real Christmas tree, but there is a Tree Protection zone, double-fenced, right outside our place.

Then there's always the waffle tree. (It didn't seem that this place made waffles, but they also didn't have much English, so we can't be sure.)

---

Flavours of Engrish and French

Engrish comes in many categories. Here, hazard warnings. They're the best.

Next, some history. It's not clear why pioneers were relevant to Hokkaido butter.

Culinary, appropriately in Flench.

Here returns the common theme of animals eating themselves to advertize restaurants serving them.

Travel. Both of the Flenches may be victims of a bad translation from English.

My favourite Engrish is that which defies categorization, like flower language.

Or stalker notebooks. In fact, there was so much notebook Engrish that I skipped most of it.

The most common Engrish theme is a confusing combination of self-help and friendship. There is always light behind the clouds.

Hello Kitty, although a 43 year old British cat, apparently, still reverts to speaking in Engrish parables.

This message negates the nose shading message from the last entry, I think. So we need heart instead of beauty.

No, wait, not heart but happiness instead. No consistency.

Let's end with this Flench, which includes a lesson of regret.

---

The land of glass creatures

We went to Otaru in Hokkaido, Japan, land of glass creatures. Here is the sky cats section.

Pigs in the bath section. Each one is slightly different, just like real pigs.

Sea creatures. Some of which inexplicably look like owls, which were in another section. I bought a glass beansprout. I haven't figured out it's use yet, but I'm pretty sure it will come in handy.

In the fish market in Hakodate, you can fish your own breakfast cuttlefish. This man splashed his girlfriend in the act, and then they ate the wiggly pieces together.

I tried on the accessories available.

This trip was also educational. This electricity pole was the first concrete one in Japan. Fascinating!

I learned that you can shade your nose to make it look narrower. My nose being narrow enough, I'm going to shade myself a few extra abs.

Barry learned that the giant asparagus face hole thing isn't well suited for selfies, and it would have been better if he'd waited for me.

The food was delicious and beautiful for fall, although Barry lost a lot of face, unfortunately, by screwing up our reservations. He will have to use the nose shading cream to recreate it.

The airport for Sapporo is not withouth its flaws.

The food poisoning menu was not available. The other menu didn't let me take away, but luckily I still found my way to the misplaced gate 68!

---

Saigon Stroll

We went to Ho Chi Minh City's antiques street. The trumpet store man welcomed us.

There was a mystifying array of loot. Tiger teeth, anyone?

I just couldn't figure out which of these treasures to buy my family for Christmas.

There is no reason to expect that any of these war-era lighters are authentic.

Imagine the likely story of these undoubtedly fake dog tags. Sam, the heroic American tourist, buys them, researches the ancestors, and calls them. Presumably, he's the 47th person to do so, and the store keeps selling reprinted dog tags.

On the same street there is the blender repair place, something we've all needed before - perhaps there's only one globally.

Ho Chi Minh has developed a lot since we first went there. They have removed a lot of the tangled street power cables. Here, there is a fancy modern sky transformer.

Everyone wears motorcycle helmets, but I'm not sure they're well-built.

Luckily, they still have the basket bike.

And you can still get all the animal parts that you need from the market.

We chose ears. Crunchy.

Maybe some tripe and fat goo for next time.

There is still unidentified fruit, but I think this one might be dried tamarind.

Worried your wet suit doesn't protect your whiteness enough from the sun? Try the swim-hoodie, now available in all sizes! Now sold with a bonus side of toxic bleachy whitening cream, because nothing is worse than Vitamin D.

---