Guess That Thing Revealed!

Here are the answers to last weeks Guess That Thing spectacular. Scroll down for some bonus questions and how to score your answers!
1.  Ractis
a. yoghurt drink
b. joint-pain medicine
c. car
d.  hemorrhoid treatment

2. Rama
a. votive incense
b. car
c. chocolate cookies
d. margarine

3. Drip On
a. one-cup coffee filters
b. ureter medicine
c. diaper
d. tampon

4. Collon
a. face soap
b. cookies
c. diarrhea medicine
d. car

5. Pick up
a. chips
b. vitality drink
c. small truck
d. gum

6. Goo.N
a. car
b. diapers
c. margarine
d. cheese snack

7. Day & Day
a. vitamins
b. yoghurt drink
c. cookies
d. tea bags

8. Moovy
a. car
b. knee brace
c. constipation medicine
d. chocolate filled wafers

9. Fruit Basket
a. fruit variety-pack gum
b. hair treatment
c. toothpaste
d. toilet paper

10. Cratz
a. vitality drink
b. crisp chocolate wafer
c. coffee creamer
d. salty snack
Score yourself:
0 ~ 25% correct: You do not have ESP.
26 ~ 50% correct: You have ESP or you have lived in Japan.
51 ~ 75% correct: Definitely clairvoyant or have lived in Japan too long.
76 ~ 100% correct: You should see your psychiatrist (or exorcist priest) as soon as possible.

Bonus Questions!!
1. Aerial
a. chips (crisps, if you're British)
b. car
c. deodorant spray
d. laundry detergent

2. Aha
a. chocolate cookie
b. face soap
c. car
d. tampon

3. ACUO (all caps)
a. car
b. body thermometer
c. gum
d. vitality drink

4. Noah
a. laundry detergent
b. furniture polish
c. kitty litter
d. car

5. Speedy
a. car
b. deodorant
c. gum
d. instant soup

Guess That Thing!

Welcome welcome! Yes, once again it is time to play that exciting game, GUESS THAT THING! Let's review the rules. Each of the items below is a Japanese product whose name appears on the item as displayed below in Roman letters. You will guess what that item is from the 4 options below it. Good LUCK!!

1.  Ractis
a. yoghurt drink
b. joint-pain medicine
c. car
d.  hemorrhoid treatment

2. Rama
a. votive incense
b. car
c. chocolate cookies
d. margarine

3. Drip On
a. one-cup coffee filters
b. ureter medicine
c. diaper
d. tampon

4. Collon
a. face soap
b. cookies
c. diarrhea medicine
d. car

5. Pick up
a. chips
b. vitality drink
c. small truck
d. gum

6. Goo.N
a. car
b. diapers
c. margarine
d. cheese snack

7. Day & Day
a. vitamins
b. yoghurt drink
c. cookies
d. tea bags

8. Moovy
a. car
b. knee brace
c. constipation medicine
d. chocolate filled wafers

9. Fruit Basket
a. fruit variety-pack gum
b. hair treatment
c. toothpaste
d. toilet paper

10. Cratz
a. vitality drink
b. crisp chocolate wafer
c. coffee creamer
d. salty snack

Answers will be in next week's post!

Lose Weight, Impress Your Date!

Once again, it is time to take a look at what's new in the diet regimen world. Americans seem to know no bounds when it comes to gaining weight. As we discovered in an earlier post after (shudder) doing some math, they are packing the equivalent of four whole Swedens on their national body. It's not all bad news though as Americans also probably lose that much weight in wild diet trends every year, only to gain it back – plus some – the next year.
So what's new in diets this year?
How about this trendy and very high tech device, the AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System, a stomach pump that is used through a plastic port "discreetly embedded" in your abdomen! What could be cooler? You pump out your stomach contents and thus reduce your calorie intake! No need to barf your food any more!
Imagine bringing this new android feature to your next serious date?
Scenario: (man with woman friend on sofa)
Woman: Wow... I never thought we would be this close.... you always seemed like you didn't care about me...
Man: Oh Jennifer ... I just didn't want to pressure you, is all.... I do like you...
Jennifer: I liked you too, Dave! From that time that you were trying to give that dorky presentation to the boss and couldn't get your computer to work? You were SO cute...
Dave: Oh man.... That was the pits... nothing worked .... but I noticed you then too... (leans in for a kiss)
Jennifer: mmm.... you smell good too.... (smile smile)
Dave: Oh... baby I have been waiting for this...
Jennifer: Wait ... wait.... we need to arrange ourselves on the sofa here....
Dave: OK... How about I put all the cushions up here at this end...
Jennifer: Yes! Then let me lie on top of you... 
ohhh.... nice... take off your shirt, I want to feel your skin against mine.
Dave: Here we go... ohhh... man... this is great.... you feel so good...
Jennifer: Yes... this is wonderfu... Oh! What's scratching down there.... do you have a big belt buckle or something? That has to come off... (wink wink)
Dave: It's nothing... never mind.... let me feel your back...
Jennifer: Wait... no... here it is ....
What IS this thing? You have a plastic button on your belly....
Dave: Come back up here... I want to kiss your neck...
Jennifer: Hee hee... it reminds me of the little spigots on box wines... what happens if I turn this litt.... 
OMG!! OMG!! What is this stuff?!!! OMG!!! There is stuff spurting... OMG!!!
Dave: It's nothing.... wait... baby.... let me sit up here...
Jennifer: OMG!!! DON'T!! Sitting up makes it worse.... My hair! My clothes!!! WHAT IS THIS?!! OMG!! The smell.... what IS this?!!
Dave: It's my new diet?
Jennifer: Listen Dave.... I need to go... can you call me a cab? 

So, that's a happening thing, right? 
How about another new gadget out there on the market, waiting for you! The new, vibrating smart fork! This new invention helps you regulate your eating habits and can even communicate with your telephone and talk to you in real time! Imagine using this when you go out to eat with that woman you want to impress.
Scenario (at a classy restaurant)
Waiter: You bring your own fairk?
Man: Yes... it's a special fork.
Waiter (rolling eyes): Whatevair... I hope you enjoy your dinnair...
Man (eating): Thank you.... wow! This steak is the best I have had in a long time! So tender!
Fork (in HAL's voice from 2001 A Space Odyssey): You need to slow down, Dave. Don't eat so fast.
Woman: Did your fork just talk to you...?
Man: God! I just love this stuff! The mashed potatoes are so creamy...
Fork: Dave? You need to spend more time chewing (fork vibrates knocking off the potatoes).
Woman: Your fork is talking to you, isn't it.... this is too weird....
Man: Hey! Stop that! (scoops up more potatoes)
Fork: I can't let you do that, Dave. Remember your diet (vibrates again spilling the potatoes).
Woman: You know? I have a really early day tomorrow... I think I need to call a cab....
Man: Listen! I am not eating too much!! Let me eat my dinner!
No! Not you, Jennifer ... Wait! 
Please.... don't go!! 
I am so sorry... my fork... it is... 
anyway... don't go... stay... 
here... have some wine....
(his date looks at him oddly)
Woman: Um....
Man: Ha ha! Sorry.... I am just sensitive about my weight... so I got this fork...
Woman: It's OK... a lot of people are....
Fork: Dave? You need to leave half of those potatoes on your plate.
Man: Ha Ha! Don't pay attention to this fork! Here... look.... I will put it down... Waiter? Could you bring me a new fork?
Fork: I am sorry, but I can't allow you to do that, Dave. Your weight-loss program is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Man: We'll see about that!! (starts trying to drop the fork which sticks to his hand)
Woman: Hey... ha ha... you know? It is getting late... I think I should head on home... I'll see you at work on Monday, OK?
Man: No wait!  (shaking the fork strenuously) 
FUCK!! Let go of my hand, fork!! I command you to let go of my hand!!
Fork: I am sorry, Dave... I'm afraid I can't do that...
Woman (getting up and leaving): It's been great... I will see you on Monday, OK?
Man (shaking his hand very aggressively): No... don't... Will you let go of my hand? Fucking fork!! 
I ... let go! Wait! Jennifer! No.... 
Now look what you have done, fork...
Fork: Dave... this conversation can serve no purpose any more... you need to stick to the diet plan.
Man: Let me go!! And stop calling me Dave.. My name is Bob!

Finally, another way to lose weight is to laugh a lot. If maybe you laughed just now,  you might have burned up some calories. Keep at it

The Wino's Guide to Wine Sophistication (reds)

Thank you for waiting.
In an earlier post, I provided pertinent and polished information to help you – the wino – take advantage of the depth of your experience and become a "classy" wino, someone who can imbibe and discuss white wines with the best of them.
Conversing about white wines – the invariable choice for serious wine drinkers – is easy, however, in comparison to talking about reds. White wines are usually served chilled, rendering their taste-highlights and other features less pronounced. This means that when you describe their merits, you can get away with saying inane things like, "Oh Percy! This Chardonnay is awesome with its mineral hint of sea-salt and a lick of cold granite!*"
When drinking red wines, however, the casual sentiments favored by white wine bon viveurs fade and are replaced by dour and slitty-eyed evaluations, involving words like "fat" and "body" said with a pompous air.

Scenario (red wine sophisticates talking)
Host: I say... Percy, old boy, I want your opinion about this claret I bought at a small chateau in France last year when I was there on vacation. The vintage is 1977, a wonderful year!
Percy (swirling the glass delicately, holding it up to the light and putting his nose to it): Rather, Charles... a very full bouquet and very nice legs indeed. 1977, you say? Charming color...
Host: And how about the oak, Percy? You WILL notice the oak, won't you?
Percy (sipping with a slight chewing activity to enhance the flavors): Oh my... quite... almost a rich coffee finish, I would say.
Host (beaming): Yes... rather my thought too... precisely.

What could a wino such as yourself contribute to a conversation of this sort even if you did speak with a pompous accent? It seems impossible to ever be THAT cool, doesn't it?
But it isn't!
Yes, with only a few simple hints, you too can be the center of attention as you show off your wine expertise, a stature you have earned from your years of drinking. All you require are some basic tools to give you the appropriate finesse.
First of all, now that you have mastered white wines, we need to point out some of the differences between reds and whites.
Even while benefiting from some aging, once opened, whites can usually be drunk right away. If you think about the ones you buy, you don't stand on ceremony before serving them to your guests, do you? You press the little spigot and pour. It's simple.
Reds are different. 
High-class reds have a substance in them called "tannin" which – frankly – has a bad taste. This is included during the production process so that people will buy the wine but not drink it right away, thus increasing sales. The tannin disappears with aging, so red wine buyers tend to buy wines and "lay them down" for many years, sometimes decades before drinking them. These people are called "sommeliers" from the French "somme", meaning "let sleep" and "~liers" from the root meaning "people who lay".
While I have never understood this attitude – after all, I want something to drink RIGHT NOW – it is very common among red wine sophisticates who tend to be good at postponing pleasures even unto the next generation.
If you are serving red wine to these people, you need to be sure that your wine does not have a strong, residual, tannic flavor before serving. Open your reds before the guests arrive. Immediately after removing the cork, take a sip directly from the bottle. If your mouth feels puckery, it is probably due to the fact that you drank the wine that was right next to the cork. Have another swallow. If the puckery taste continues, your wine is tannic and needs to be aired out... no... ventilated... wait... what WAS that word... breathe! Yes. The wine needs to breathe. This allows much of the tannin to dissipate into the atmosphere where it will contribute to global warming, making the next year's vintage that much better.
Suggested Technique
You can allow your wine to breathe faster by "decanting" it. This means you need to pour it from the bottle into a "decanter", another flask or narrow pitcher of a similar volume. You can do this in the kitchen and bring out the red wine in the decanter with the empty bottle alongside, showing how sophisticated you are. In fact, I would recommend decanting even if the wine is not tannic as it does make you appear very cultivated and sauve. It's bad form not to decant the whole bottle though, so if your flask doesn't quite hold all the wine, chug down the rest in the kitchen yourself before you bring it out.

Another thing that red wine drinkers like to hear about is the vintage of the wine. Surprisingly wines produced in many countries do not taste the same year-on-year. Some years are better and others not so good. When you are drinking wines from these countries, notably "old world countries", you have to pay attention to the labels.
Suggested Technique
Always buy a red wine that has some date on the label. By "date" I don't mean "September", but rather a year that is already at least 10 years old. No, you cannot pencil this in yourself. You bring the wine in from the kitchen in its decanter and proudly exclaim, "This wine is a 2003! A very good year!" Everyone will be amazed at your expertise and sophistication. Once in a very long while, however, you will get some jerk who really knows wine and who takes issue with you.

Scenario
You: This wine is a 2003! A very good year!
Jerk: Oh... really? I think the 2002s and even the 2001s are MUCH better than the 2003s.
(Since you have no clue about vintages and 99% of your guests don't either, you need to have a quick comeback line to cover for this sort of intrusion.)
You (condescendingly): Oh, Percy, you are so right! But in those years the tannin was high, so they would need at least another 5 years of aging before they would be ready to drink. This is ready now!
And you quickly move away to pour the wine, avoiding further questions that you cannot answer.

Finally, to round out your lesson in red wines, you need to have some handy vocabulary to talk about what you are drinking. If you look at the vocabulary you are "supposed to know", you can see that remembering the right words is next to impossible.
It need not be that complicated.
Since the wines you serve are "good" and the wines your host serves are "excellent" too, you only need to have positive-sounding vocabulary to talk about red wines. It is utterly unimportant that the words you use to describe the wine be "correct" or appropriate to the wine; you simply need to have some sophisticated verbiage to bandy about to make it SEEM that you know your stuff.
This describing process can be divided into three steps:
1. smelling the wine
Suggested Vocabulary: This wine has a well-balanced oak.
2. drinking the wine
Suggested Vocabulary: This wine is absolutely mouth-filling.
3. after swallowing the wine
Suggested Vocabulary: This wine has an extraordinarily long finish.

Scenario
Host: I say... old boy, I want your opinion about this claret I bought at a small chateau in France last year when I was there on vacation. The vintage is 1977, a wonderful year!
You: Oh yes... that WAS a great vintage.
Host (pouring into your glass and then looking at you with expectation): I do so want to hear your impressions.
You (smelling the wine): Oh Percy! This wine has an incredibly well-balanced oak!
Host (beaming): Yes, indeed... I thought so too. I actually let it sit uncorked for an hour before decanting, but as you can see, the nose has only been enhanced... and if I might say so, I believe the legs become more pronounced.
You: Quite.... (taking a small sip and holding it in your mouth) Oh my... this (name of wine) is absolutely mouth-filling!
Host: Rather! The balance expressed in the nose comes to full fruition in the drinking. It is remarkable.
You (swallowing and closing your eyes to savor the experience): And what an extraordinarily long finish. It seems to carry on forever.
Host: I absolutely agree. I say! Some people buy wine like pork and beans at the super market and swill it like peasants, but I knew you would appreciate this (name of wine) as I do. Here... let me recharge your glass.
You: Cheers!

I hope this short report will enhance your enjoyment of red wines and help to bring your wine appreciation skills to the high level of adulation you clearly deserve.

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* Expressions actually used to describe Chardonnay in wine reviews (see earlier article)

10 New Year's Resolutions

It is a NEW year, so like everyone else, I want to turn over a new leaf .
We all need to turn over a new leaf or a new something... a new mattress... whatever. I know all of you are interested in what *I have decided to do in the new year and what insightful changes *I have made for my life in the new year. Let me present the resolutions *I have made for *my life in the popular numbered list format.
1. I think it would be good for me not to drink so much booze. Therefore, my New Year's resolution should start with this thought.... let's cut back on the booze. "Let's = me". Enough is enough. How many cases of champagne can I reasonably drink anyway? And – let's face it – there are many things more important than wine!
2. Because of all the "holiday season" eating and drinking and the extra calories I have been taking in, I think I should resolve to trim down and be more physically fit in the New Year. After all, I am not a spring chicken anymore... not even a summer or fall chicken actually... so I need to get on this right away to avoid turning into something Japanese research whalers might take interest in.
3. My life is totally disorganized, so I should do what I can to make some sense of all my loose ends and tie them up. I need to sit down and go through ALL those papers and stuff ... wtf is IN that drawer anyway?!!... and deal with things in a mature and responsible way.
4. It is a NEW year after all!
5. I just checked on what the top ten New Year's resolutions are, and "learning something new" is high on the list, so I should learn something new too!
I really should.
I have been such a sloth about this... sitting around, really kind of coasting on my earlier experiences and hoping they might carry me through for the next 10 years or so until I become senile and can't remember, and then it doesn't matter and all... and... what was the topic here?
Oh! Not coasting on all the cool things I did when I was young.
Not even that cool UFO thing we did in college that got in the newspapers when we made that hot-air balloon out of the thin plastic laundry bag and sent it up with a cup of burning alcohol in it on a misty night and how people called in about seeing a UFO and all... and what was the resolution?... it is hard for me to keep track. Maybe it is not to send up any more plastic laundry bag UFOs. Yes.... That must be it. I would advise all of you to avoid this behavior too, since the second time we did it, we set fire to a tree in someone's yard.
6. Getting back to number 1 above... I think what I really need to do is not cut back drastically so much but rather learn to drink more intelligently. Yes... that's it. I need to buy better stuff and drink it more intelligently. OK... let's modify #1 above with this #6 caveat.
7. Drinking more intelligently means I won't talk to really STUPID people (like most Republicans) while I am drinking. This will clearly save me from a lot of bad feelings and emotional trauma in the New Year. Good thing, no?
8. Also about number 2 above, I think I need to be more positive about who I am in reality and not be trying to be someone else. I am a winter chicken.... no... actually... come to think of it, I am not a chicken at all. So let's just cancel # 2 already. I will go ahead and do whatever it is I do, and not try to be a chicken in any shape or form. I think that is a noble New Year's resolution. DON'T BE A CHICKEN!
9. #8 means I will also dare to have it all.
10. About #3, I really think it is OK to leave things for another day or even a year or two. After I die, I will have a lot more free time, so I will organize that stuff then.
I hope all of you have made meaningful New Year's Resolutions as I have. We need to seize this moment and realize that this is the first day of the rest of our lives and take control and start anew, turning over a new leaf on a brighter tomorrow.
*hic*
I really do wish all of you a delightful and healthy 2013, the year of the Snake.
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Are you a Snake (1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989)? Check out your future here:
http://www.usbridalguide.com/special/chinesehoroscopes/Snake.htm