It's dusk in Atsugi.

I don't know when or if I'll ever see this view again. The well-lit small building on the left is the empty 学生ホール / gakusei hooru / student hall in the middle of spring break at Tokyo Polytechnic University in Atsugi, my home for the last 3 years.

So many has happened in the last 3 years. I went to Japan, lived on my own, far away from family for about a year. Got married. Lived with my wife in our own little Japanese apartment that we call home. She gave birth to our first baby. I got a doctoral degree. I published 2 papers in an international journal and 1 in a Japanese journal. I made many new friends from around the world. I went to Europe for the first time. And many more things.

Today, I'm leaving Atsugi again. I'll still be in Japan though for just a little while longer. And this is far from goodbye from the Japan! Japan! blog. There's more to blog about Japan, but...

It's dusk in Atsugi, indeed.

Bento! #250: Dinner from the nearby bentou-ya

I've seen this place many, many times before. And now, after almost 3 years, is the only time I ever tried to order here. Bentou-ya / 弁当屋 means "bento (lunch box / packed lunch) shop." This is almost the equivalent of the "carenderia" and "turo-turo" (small mom-and-pop or hole-in-the-wall restaurants) in the Philippines.

This exact bentou-ya, more specifically, is ほかほか弁当 / hokahoka bentou, which literally translates to "warm lunch."

6 more photos below!

View from my office hallway, just after sunset... and a UFO?

And then I see this...

A little warmth in the middle of winter

A day for smiles and sunshine. And 1 less layer of clothes. :D

The above shows rain but it's sunny with some clouds right now.

Snow 2013 #2

Yup, that just happened. Last Sunday evening. Took this photo at around 9:30am on Monday morning. But after 2 hours, all the snow in this photo had already melted (and then evaporated) away.

1 hour of snow in (under) 1 minute!

Best viewed in HD!

おー初雪! (First snow!)

Nevermind that it started snowing here in Atsugi a good 3 hours since it started in Yokohama and in Tokyo. For some reason, I walked around and I felt like singing "It's the most wonderful time of the year" and "White Christmas." :)

Please note that the above is the full-length video; I'll be uploading a more compressed, shorter video soon.

Bento! #182 & #183: A couple of burgers I tried at Dom Dom (Hamburger Restaurant)

甘辛チキンバーガー / uma kara chikin baagaa / sweet and spicy chicken burger. 450 yen for a regular set. Plus 110 yen for an "L" set.

Dom Dom's regular hamburger, "only" 180 yen. Love the beef(?) patty, (pause), ketchup, (pause), pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Yum, yum, yum.

Winter is coming.

December arrived and the temperatures started not going above 10 degrees. At one point, different weather sites reported temperatures of -1 to 0 degrees, although in my ad hoc home measurements, it only became as low as 1-3 degrees. I thought winter was here already.

Alas, by the end of the week, temperatures even reached 18 degrees by my measurements. Starting last night though, there were strong winds. I thought it was nature's way of blowing away the leaves from the trees, and from the ground to certain spots so that they can easily be taken away to become food for next year's new trees and plants and flowers. Alas, today, most red and yellow and brown leaves are now almost gone from the trees. Winter is near.

Nice house

Can you see the chrysanthemums? Oh and those reddening autumn leaf colors.

Christmas is near!

Or so our local 3F (surii efu / スリーエフ) convenience store (コンビニ / konbini) suggests.

A morning scene in Atsugi, with Mt Ooyama in the background

It might be difficult to see but the the whole mountain is almost all-orangish now. I was waiting at the bus stop near my place, when I took this photo. You can see the "Taiwan" restaurant with the big red and yellow sign on the same side of the road. And my trusty neighbourhood Lawson convenience store.

Can you see the orange-ish colors?

Bento! #155: Yakiniku!

The restaurant behind the tree is the place. View Larger Map.

I am not sure exactly of the name of the place. But I love the sauce. And well, everything. Would come back here again. It takes a lot, though, to eat enough (i.e. it was a little bit expensive -- and you have to do the cooking yourselves). It might be better to go to this other yakiniku restaurant downtown, called Fuu Fuu Tei, which has eat-all-you-can yakiniku / 焼肉 / やきにく / grilled meat.

Their special sauce. Looks like what we call in the Philippines as "sarsa,"
and more particularly "sarsa ng lechon," except this might also have some
sesame and miso added.

5pm scene here in Atsugi

A month from now, this will be the scene here at 4:30pm.

Nothing Jolli about this one! #Japan

Thanks to Okada-san for the photo!

On one hand, I love Atsugi because there's a lot of nature here. It's a "suburb of Tokyo," after all; i.e. it's far from being a mostly-concrete jungle. Lots of trees, not so much wide roads and consequently, not so much cars. And consequently, not so much pollution. Lots of fresh air. Plenty of stars are always visible and bright when it's a clear night sky. At Downtown Atsugi (Hon-Atsugi), there's enough variety of stores and restaurants and pubs/bars and entertainment if you're missing the city life. But even there, the buildings aren't even 10 floors high.

On the other hand, there really are plenty of bugs here. You know it's summer when they start to appear. Yes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, cicadas (which they call semi here), bees, flies, ants, spiders. Bats even. Well, spiders are probably around the whole year round. But anyways. Here's a bug that is really huge; its body is about 2 inches long. And it was hanging out just outside the restroom (toilet) doors on our floor. My friend took this photo about 2 meters away with a zoom lens. Meanwhile, I just use the restroom on the next floor. Around this time, people here are encouraged not to use air-conditioning, and so instead, we leave doors and windows open for natural ventilation. I only hope it doesn't fly to our office room!

There is nothing Jolli about this one.

Mid-October

It's already the middle of October, and we're still able to wear T-shirts and shorts. We're more than 20 days away from summer already, which only means we're just about 70 days away from the official start of winter. I did sleep last night, for the first time this Autumn season, with a sweater on. While today was sunny and comfortable (with a high of about 25 degrees, mid-day), yesterday was cloudy and a little cold (with a high of only around 19 degrees).

Also, by the way, starting in September, the Yuyake Koyake song is now played here at 5pm, whereas during summer, it was played at 6pm. By November, it will be played at 4:30pm. Sunset now is at around 5 or 5:30pm. At the peak of summer, sunset is at around 7:45pm and sunrise at around 4am. Coming from a tropical country where temperatures and sunrise and sunset times are practically constant the whole year, I associate dusk with dinner time. By December, I would start feeling hungry at around 4pm already. But then, it might also just be because of the cold. :D

Bento! #104: Premium Kuro Burger @BurgerKing - Finally!

Waiting for my burger and fries. The 黒バーガー (Kuro/black burger)
set meal comes with "M" sized fries and free "M" sized Coke Zero
 - which as you know comes with a label that is also mostly in black - for 790 yen.
The burger uses "bamboo charcoal" to make the bun black, plus a "black
ketchup," made from squid ink and garlic. You can probably see in the
illustration of the burger the black sauce.

My Kuro Burger arrives. I was surprised that it was just a small burger.
I thought it would be a special version of the Whopper. Writing this blog
article 4 hours later, I feel hungry already.

A first glimpse of the black bun burger.

After a few bites. There's lettuce, onions, tomatoes, mayonnaise and that
"black ketchup" thing.

The whole set (fries just arrived). I actually got an "L" set, that is totally 860
yen, if I remember correctly.

The verdict? It's not something I'd eat again - because charcoal is bad for you. Even if it's from bamboo. And I really would have wanted a Whopper version of this instead. Taste-wise, I almost didn't notice the difference between this and a regular BK burger like a Whopper Jr (which is essentially this burger minus the black buns and black sauce and mayo). But, I was probably just really hungry.

Useless fact: It's Burger King's 5th anniversary in Japan this weekend.

Interesting fact: This is not the very first black burger. Early this year there was The Darth Vader Burger. But, you can say that this only validates claims made by some that black buns are the new "in" thing in the fast food industry today.

Weather right now in Atsugi

I found this nifty weather widget that could show the weather right now in Atsugi. Come back here if you're interested to find out what it is like in Atsugi right now. You can also move around to see the forecast for the next few hours, or for the next few days. Of course, it's not always accurate. If you want one for your own website or for your own city, click the link to the widget's developer's website. Actually they also have a Google Chrome browser extension that I highly recommend as well.

At around this time, it's way hotter and just as humid in most of Japan than in the Philippines.

YoWindow.com Forecast by yr.no

Bento BreakTime #22: O.M.G. Burgers, finally! (Photos)

I've been wanting to go visit O.M.G. Burgers for a long time now, but it's about a 45-minute, 4.5-mile, 7.24-km bike ride from school, plus there's a lot of steep slopes and rolling terrain along the way. And then you have to go back the same way. It's actually outside of Atsugi already; it's in the neighboring Aikawa City.

Obviously, burgers are their specialty, and they even have a 12-inch burger which you should pre-order a day early before going there. You can check out their menu below.

Rural Atsugi

Our professor invited us to a walk around school - a rural area of Atsugi, with plenty of farm land, hills, and all that - and 20 of us went along. We walked for an hour and twenty minutes under a generally sunny winter day. The video below is a 10-minute, super-fast-forward version (8x speed) of the original.