Thursday, March 16, 2006

ice cream in winter, anyone?

hokkaido is a land of ice cream, weird ice cream flavours like, uni, ika, natto, etc.

but of course, there are nice, heart warming flavours such as lavender, rose, mint, etc


i wonder how it feels to eat a frozen ice cream at temperature of 5 deg c?

will find out and let all of you know!

8 comments:

imp said...

marina square (along projectshop/billy bombers that stretch) has an ice-cream restaurant with ice-cream frm hokkaido. apparently authentic. i haven't tried though.

CatDonna & Cats said...

There was a period of time when I shuttled back and forth from Japan quite a bit. The husband was working there for a while.

I didn't manage to go to Hokkaido but I tried the ice cream... SUPERB stuff.

I didn't see that many cats on the streets, but all the cats I did see were HUGE. Especially the ones near the temples.

Obviously they were very well fed and taken care of... glossy coats, bright eyes, FAT ROUND BODIES. I asked around, and it seems the Japanese love their cats.

Another thing I noticed about Japanese stray cats. They all look happy. Not scared and evidently abused like our strays here.

*sigh* I think we could learn a lesson from the Japanese here.

cat_aunty said...

Agreed on Japanese stray cats, based on what I saw in magazines and on TV. So fat, even those around the cemeteries.

My sister went to India, and told me she didn't even see one stray cat there. Maybe they were eaten....:-p

kuro.shiro.neko said...

catdonna, japanese cats are very "ho mia" one..

they even have a cat as an (almost national) mascot. I mean Maneki Neko.

when japanese are so busy, they will say they want to borrow a cat's hand for help (yes, it's an idiom) 猫の手も借りたい (neko no te mo karitai).

when japanese want to be humble and say they have a really small garden, they say thweir garden is like a cat's forehead 猫の額みたい (neko no hitai mitai).

when they want to say, you buy something expensive but never use it (like white elephant), they say 猫に小判 (neko ni koban), translated literally as giving a coin to a cat = useless.

hee.. my sensei would be so proud of me, can remember all the idioms related to cats!

cat_aunty said...

Who is Maneki Neko?

kuro.shiro.neko said...

cat_aunty, Maneki Neko is the famous 招财猫, the cat that has one paw beckoning.

KXBC said...

Try the lavender ice cream if you are going to Furano (fu liang ye). Fragrant but a tad too sweet for me.

And yes, I agree with the point that stray cats in Japan are seldom sighted and those sighted are very well taken care of. I saw a cat family in a temple and they were well fed and quite social. One of them even crossed the road to sit outside the vet. I think the vet feeds them too.

I was in India twice and all I saw were bullocks. No cat.

Same in Bangladesh too. No stray cats at all. If there are, they will be living a very harsh life.

kxbc

ratu said...

Who is Maneki Neko?