Saturday, September 17, 2005
Japanese Imports and J-Pop
Today I decided to finally make the trek down to the local Japanese import store. Google maps tells me that it would be 6.1 miles each way if I drove, but since I don't have a car yet I had to bike. Not having a death wish, I had to take a bunch of side streets instead of the direct route, which probably added on some distance as well.
The trip started off poorly. Most of the way there I was riding directly into the wind, which was stronger than I've experienced before in Austin. This would have been good kite weather, but it made for slow going for me. All in all, it took me a little more than an hour to get there.
The store was a bit disappointing. It had fairly high prices (most items seemed to be 1-2 dollars more than they were in Japan), and it was a small store that had lots of open space, resulting in a very small selection. I ended up buying a bottle of ramune, a frozen gyudon, some senbei, a box of Kinoko no Yama (mushroom shaped chocolates), 3 packs of hi-chew, and a pack of goma shio furikake (rice seasoning). The total for all that was about $17, which I would guess is about twice as much as it would have cost in Japan. My main reason for going was to see if I could get some C.C.Lemon, but when I asked about it I was told that they were sold out. Evidently they "might get some on Thursday."
After checking out I sat outside for a while drinking the ramune. This is actually the first time I've had it, despite having seen it all around in Japan. It wasn't all that bad, but had sort of a generic bubble gum flavor, which I'm not very fond of. If I get it again I'll have to get the orange flavored one, since the only options seemed to be orange, melon, and original.
The trip back I didn't have to deal with the wind, which saved me quite a bit of riding time, but this time I ended up having to wait for quite a few lights which made the trip back almost as long as the trip there.
The entire trip I was listening to this week's top 30 singles from the Oricon charts in Japan. I found several of them quite interesting:
#14 - Touch, the theme song from a 1985 anime series.
#15 - A Japanese version(you can click the movie links to see the beginning of the music video for this version) of a song that's been popular on the internet.
#18 - A remake of the Theme song to a 1996 anime series.
Several of the theme songs to currently showing anime are also on the list, which is normal, but I was surprised to see theme songs from old series on top as well.
The trip started off poorly. Most of the way there I was riding directly into the wind, which was stronger than I've experienced before in Austin. This would have been good kite weather, but it made for slow going for me. All in all, it took me a little more than an hour to get there.
The store was a bit disappointing. It had fairly high prices (most items seemed to be 1-2 dollars more than they were in Japan), and it was a small store that had lots of open space, resulting in a very small selection. I ended up buying a bottle of ramune, a frozen gyudon, some senbei, a box of Kinoko no Yama (mushroom shaped chocolates), 3 packs of hi-chew, and a pack of goma shio furikake (rice seasoning). The total for all that was about $17, which I would guess is about twice as much as it would have cost in Japan. My main reason for going was to see if I could get some C.C.Lemon, but when I asked about it I was told that they were sold out. Evidently they "might get some on Thursday."
After checking out I sat outside for a while drinking the ramune. This is actually the first time I've had it, despite having seen it all around in Japan. It wasn't all that bad, but had sort of a generic bubble gum flavor, which I'm not very fond of. If I get it again I'll have to get the orange flavored one, since the only options seemed to be orange, melon, and original.
The trip back I didn't have to deal with the wind, which saved me quite a bit of riding time, but this time I ended up having to wait for quite a few lights which made the trip back almost as long as the trip there.
The entire trip I was listening to this week's top 30 singles from the Oricon charts in Japan. I found several of them quite interesting:
#14 - Touch, the theme song from a 1985 anime series.
#15 - A Japanese version(you can click the movie links to see the beginning of the music video for this version) of a song that's been popular on the internet.
#18 - A remake of the Theme song to a 1996 anime series.
Several of the theme songs to currently showing anime are also on the list, which is normal, but I was surprised to see theme songs from old series on top as well.
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