Babyfoot!

Japan LOVES babies. Sure, Japan isn't HAVING babies - the birth rate is at an all-time low and the aging population is a major cause of concern - but it clearly loves babies. Go to the beauty section of any pharmacy or supermarket, what are you going to see? Babies.

Achieve baby skin. Baby lips. Be a baby. Be a baby again. Make the noise. Waaaahhh.

Okay, you don't have to make the noise. My point is, whereas Western cosmetic campaigns might make the occasional reference to baby-softness, Japanese companies go all out and put pictures of babies on a good 60% of the skincare products, 80-90% of the base makeup and approximately 400% of the lipbalms. That way, you know they really work. They wouldn't go round putting pictures of babies on things for nothing.

All very well and good. But what of Baby Foot?

Yes, by putting your feet in some special acid bags (?), you too could peel off all the skin from the surface of your toesies. Soak your feet in fruit acid, then over the course of several days, your outer skin will shed like a cocoon. Behold, your feet are reborn.

I bought a pack of Baby Foot a good year and a half ago and still haven't got around to using it. I'm not sure whether that's lethargy or fear. But the time must come in all our lives when we stand up, hold our heads high, and put our feet in special acid bags. I'm not even particularly fussed about the state of my leg-hands (as we should all call them). In winter I am permanently covered up in at least two pairs of tights, and even when I notice any roughness, I take a kind of perverse pride in it. I think it comes from growing up near a beach, walking frequently over pebbles without shoes in an attempt to impress a person who wasn't there. But I would take even more perverse pride in removing layers of my skin for no reason, and curiosity is a much-underrated quality, so whatever, I'm going to try the Baby Foot.

Will report soon.

Setsubun!

Apparently, a couple of weeks ago it was risshun, the official beginning of spring in Japan. I think I've noticed the change - I now only wear two jumpers around the house instead of three. The day before risshun is setsubun, when people throw soybeans in order to drive away evil. The beans are thrown either out of one's front door, or at someone dressed as a demon (or oni - see last year's post on Oni Matsuri for more delicious oni-themed fun), all the while shouting "DEMONS, OUT! LUCK, IN!"

At my Monday morning Japanese class, we all had a chance to have a go with some setsubun activities. First, we drew out omikuji (fortunes) from a box at random, so we could get a glimpse of what luck we would have in the upcoming year. All the fortunes are labelled from "great luck" to "no luck whatsoever". Naturally, I ended up with the one labelled "no luck whatsoever", along with the rather gnomic advice "if you eat cold food, you will become cold." (If anyone figures out what this means, please tell me.) However, my teachers told me that if you get the worst fortune, you can reverse your fortune by volunteering to be the oni, and throwing out sweets to everyone. If you do this, apparently, your luck will turn from non-existent to great. Maybe this is good advice to live by - if you're finding life is not bringing you what you want, you should turn to doing things for others, and through that you will find satisfaction. Or maybe I should just throw things at people more.

After throwing sweets at my classmates and reversing my luck, I still felt I hadn't done enough to secure a good year. My nearby temple was doing a setsubun ceremony where people would throw beans at the crowd, who would hope to catch them for good luck. Said temple is also near an amazing Italian restaurant and I really wanted one of their mushroom and truffle-oil pizzas, so I was completely set for the afternoon. In front of the temple, I waited for ages for the crowds to disperse and to get a chance to be near enough to catch beans. I saw lots of well-prepared people who had brought massive bean-catching bags with them, but alas I had not been so thoughtful. I tried to use a tiny old plastic bag from the bottom of my handbag, but it was pretty much useless. I saw a few girls using their big snood-style scarves as receptacles, but my puny regular scarf was no good. Finally I settled on using my hat - too small for my liking, but it would do. I waited for about an hour as temple officials and enthusiastic volunteers got up on the big platform and threw beans out to their hopeful audience, but I didn't get one single bean. (I wasn't the only one - I shared a few soulful looks with fellow ill-fortuned crowd members, including an old man carrying a dachshund like a baby).

Any luck? Well, my patience was eventually rewarded, and I did catch one lone bean! I'm not sure about the exact bean-to-luck exchange rate but I decided to count it as a symbolic victory, and scampered off to get my prize (pizza).

When I got home, I found that my one-month-old laptop had broken. Ah well, better luck next year.

Unperky Tries Chocolate Fries

Well, obviously this is something I tried. It was on a day when I'd called in sick for work because I was buzzing with headaches and fatigue, so instead of taking the borderline-homeopathic nonsense that passes for over-the-counter pain relief in this country, I chose to self-medicate with fast food. I had struggled my way through my morning Japanese class because I knew I wouldn't get my money back from a same-day cancellation, and thinking about the McDonald's across the street - and its special, limited-time-only chocolate-covered French fries - was the only thing that got me through the whole hour.

Japan loves limited-edition stuff, even when the resulting product is something seemingly no-one would ever want to eat. I've even seen plum-flavoured crisps, so by Japanese standards the McChoco Potato is actually pretty tame. Your eyes are not deceiving you -  it's just regular fries that come with a chocolate and white-chocolate sauce, which you drizzle on yourself from a special double-pocketed packet designed to evenly disperse both sauces at the same time. (I wish I'd kept the packet; it was quite a feat of engineering.)

I was half-expecting the McChoco Potato to be a freakshow of a dish, but it was actually quite pleasant. The saltiness and sweetness makes for a fine combination - a bit like salted caramel, but more honest in its appeal to humanity's base desires. The only issue is that the sauce tends to cover the top of the pile of fries, but get less plentiful down the bottom, which leads to a slightly confusing ending. Chocolate-covered fries are good, but if you just have a normal fry with a dab of chocolate on them, it just feels like a mistake. Thorough dispersal is necessary to improve the product, I think. Maybe it should come packed with a pair of miniature salad tongs, so you can toss the sauce through like a Ceasar dressing.

The good news is that if you aren't in Japan, or you were too late to the party and McChoco Potato is no longer available by the time you read this, you can recreate them at home quite easily yourself with McDonalds fries and a jar of Nutella. I know I will.