A new caption contest!

I got my second blog spam!  I must be important to be getting spam, or someone out there has nothing better to do.  Anyway I took these photos the other day around sunset.  The snow has been sticking around.  The photos are from the University of Hokkaido farm looking West.  I got a suggestion from one of the blog readers to try posting the full size photos to the blog.  So these are the full size .jpg images.  It took a little longer, but we'll have to see if the quality is better.

 I love the wandering tractor treads in the snow/mud.  It reminds me of my own limited tractor driving skills.  Ah yes, Jared knows what I am talking about.  As a kid I had a job which I think was either unpaid/or underpaid, I'm remember something about 5 cents a bale and there were not that many bales.  Anyway the job was helping a farmer get in his hay.  His tractor had terrible steering and couldn't go in a straight line (at least that is my defense.)  I was given the task of driving the tractor over the mountain to the other side where there were more hay fields.   Jared followed along in the truck after me about an hour later.  He told me later that it looked like a drunk driver was behind the wheel of the tractor.  The tracks wobbled all over the place the whole way.

 In the US we mangle other languages, like Spanglish.  In Japan they have this.  It looks like English, but I don't know what it means.  The garage of dreams?  Where cars go to dream?  The best life for a car?  Dream of (insert word here) life car special garage?  The thing is the garage doesn't actually have any garage, just an office and an outdoor parking lot.

 Back by popular request we have the Caption contest.  Based on the two photos below come up with the most entertaining explanation of what is going on.  I will pick a winner by the end of the weekend (tomorrow night) and the winner will get to choose what I talk about in a future blog post.

 I had a request for some prices of staple items in Japan.  I took these photos at the grocery store today.  To my Japanese friends I have a question, what are the items what you consider staples?  In the US eggs, milk, cheese, and bread are all staples.  What are staple foods in Japan?  I imagine rice would be one of them, but what else?

The first photo is of a package of 10 eggs. The current exchange rate is 77.7 Yen to the US Dollar.  This means 178 Yen would be $2.29.

 I did the conversion from ml to quarts and found that 1000ml=1.03quarts

 This is the fancy cheese at the store.  198 Yen is equal to $2.55.  The amount, 50g =1.7oz.

 This is the cheap cheese.  It comes already shredded and you get 500g.  498 Yen = $6.40

 Bread is different here in Japan.  The bread in the first photo is 8 slices the size of regular bread slices in the US.  This is (as far as I can tell) considered a loaf of bread in Japan.  In the US a loaf of Bread would have around 22 slices* according to my internet research.  168 Yen = $2.16.

 The second photo is of bread in the form that I have seen it most often in Japan.  It is the same amount of bread as shown in the photo above, but the slices are twice as big.  The price is the same.  You can see the 4 on the side of the bag, saying there are 4 slices of bread in the bag.

Bre's away at a conference, so this is the first blog post I have done all on my own.  If I missed something just let me know.

That's all for now,

Kyle