happylife

Fake beer

Beer is the most popular drink in Japan, but the real beer ratio has been reducing year by year and fake beer is getting more popular instead. The fake beer implies low malt beer and no malt beer. They are different from so-called non-alcohol beer. They taste almost the same as real beer and you can be intoxicated by drinking them. You might wonder why Japanese people do love such a fake thing. Actually we don't love such fake beer. Of course we don't prefer fake things but the price of them is attractive. Owing to the terrible liquor tax system in Japan, a 350ml can of real beer costs around 200 yen while low malt beer is 150 yen and no malt beer is 100 yen! No malt beer is made from peas and literally contains no malts and hops; it can't be called "beer" any more. Fake food related matters are reported on TV news every day in Japan and most of them are frauds. Sure this fake beer is not a fraud, but it is a fake and I don't like this situation in which Japan is full of fake foods.

The gas price

The gas price in Japan has become 150 yen per litter which is the historical record. Somebody even says that the price is possibly going up more and more. Japan is very weak in this situation because it has no natural resources including oil. All we have to do is just waiting for the price to come back lower. As I mainly use a small motorcycle instead of a car, the high oil price does not affect my wallet so much; I pay around 1,000 yen at the highest for gas every month. The only direct problem for me is that some of the gas stations in my neighborhood have closed down. It's difficult to find them and I have to take care not to run out of gas especially at Sunday night because most of the survived gas stations are closed.

Fast food education

I visited a large book store the other day to do some marketting researches about English textbooks for Japanese students. I'm not a English teacher and I know my English is far from perfect, but I had a business offer to write a book about blogging in English and I accepted it. I have been thinking about what to write and actually written some pages of scripts, but I threw them away because I couldn't be satisfied with them. More than a half of one floor of the book store was occupied with so-called English textbooks for Japanese; most of them are written in Japanese though they are English textbooks.

Blood donation

I went to donate blood after lunch today. It was almost eleven years ago when I donated my blood last. I had two reasons for the donation; one is of course to contribute to someone who needs blood and the other is to check my blood. My everyday life has been more or less lazy, especially after coming back to Tokyo and I was afraid of my health conditions. Fortunately, my blood had no problem and I gave 400ml of blood. I feel better because of the weight loss after the injection. One thing I was surprised at was that there were a lot of young people waiting for the blood donation in the center. I think that is because they can enjoy free drink and a fast-food hamburger there. This blood donation card, which is given to all the donor, has a point system in which we can get a present by gathering the points. It seems to be working to increase the popularity of blood donation.

An electric toothbrush

It was more than seven years ago when I started using an electric toothbrush for the first time in my life and since then my teeth have been in good conditions. I would see a dentist almost every year not to check my bad teeth but to treat them, however, thanks to this high-tech brush, I don't have to visit the scary, painful and unlucky place any more. The brush head vibrates and generates sound waves or ultra sound waves which remove the plaque on and between teeth. It's so effective that we can realize that our tooth surface becomes smooth after only one brushing. If you are not using this wonderful tool, I strongly recommend to use it. It costs around 100 bucks but it's economical in the long term.