Hi all, there's been no posts from us for 1½ months through a combo of laziness and lack of inspirations. It's not as if the the last 6 weeks has not been eventful:
Susan Boyle lost in Britain got Talent and got checked into a mental hospital.
On the eve of 20th anniversary of June 4th Tiananmen incident, our government managed to build the longest and biggest firewall in history against foreign evil influence, including blogspots like us.
MJ died at home probably from drug overdose which then bring us the biggest media event ever.
....
But this blog is about happier things and so none of the above qualifies.
Finally, we can bring you something different. Mum and dad went to Tokyo last weekend and came back with some photos and memories to share with us. But you might ask why is the first post headed by a poster of Labrador and a picture of the Don Quijote shop in Roppongi, Tokyo. What's the connection?
The star in the poster, Rocky, is a retired Narco dog owned by Japanese Customs. This is placed prominently near the luggage conveyor belt in Narita airport. After coming through the shortest immigration queue ever, this poster is the first thing which greeted mum and dad. Basically, it says,
"Even though though I am already retired, my many apprentices will search for the smell of drugs in the premise. So don't be surprised!!"
While dad didn't see any sniffer dogs walking around the luggage area, he wasn't sure if this poster was meant to be a deterrent for drug traffickers going through Japanese airport. As most of these bad characters are deemed to be gaijin (foreigners), they will only look at the poster and think cute dog!! Or did all the younglings were taken back to training after they failed to find the 142 grams to cannabis that Japan Customs planted on some Narita passenger's luggage in May last year.
Everything soon becomes clearer when mum and dad walked through customs.
"Where do you come from?", so started the normal sequence of Custom's questions.
"Hong Kong."......
It was wrong to expect going through after the standard sequence of questions. Every single piece of luggage was searched thoroughly and then just when they thought they are walking through, mum and dad were asked to be body-searched. The whole process was done with the usual Japanese politeness. While waiting for mum to be searched, dad said to the officer who did his search in his broken Japanese, "I don't carry drugs!!" (麻薬をもってない！！）Then the officer said, "High alert from Hong Kong!!" Only then did dad realise what was going on and so he said in frustration, "we are not younglings!!" （若い者がじゃない！！）The officer just shrugged his shoulder and walked away. Mum even got asked to take off her shoes behind the partitions where they had their searches done.
So that's how the picture of Don Quijote got linked to the first picture of Rocky. This was the exact shop where Kelvin Kwan and Jill Vidal (關楚耀 and 衛詩) were found carrying cannabis as a result of a suspected theft. This was briefly mentioned in another entry
here. Police subsequently found heroin in the hotel where Jill was staying. Of course all these drug trafficking went on under the nose of Rocky's apprentices and Japan Customs, who probably had the impression that young tourists from Hong Kong were a bunch of mad fashion followers going to Harajuku before this incident. But now, they are no different to Colombian drug lords.
Dad told mum that she should take it as a compliment that the female officer searched her so thoroughly!!
We never really understand why mum like to strain her eyes just to put back scattered pieces of cardboard. And the one above has taken even longer than usual.
Enoshima is a great place to spend a quiet half-day. Hopefully these pictures tell a better story than just words. Definitely worth the extra train journey from Kamakura.
No matter where you are in Enoshima, there bound to be cats sitting or lying down around. They are all out in the open and look well nourished (some even over-nourished.) We're never sure if they are pets or semi-wild cats, but they don't seem to run away from people or flash lights for that matter. 
Dinner time - so after a long day's walk and not had a proper lunch, how would you find dinner destination? You walk some more until you find the restaurant with the biggest buzz and the longest queue. It's lucky that Enoshima is a tiny island with 4km in circumference and a small stretch of waterfront restaurants. Tobiccho is a small seafood restaurant with a small street stall at the front and there seems to be no lack of people queuing up for all its different concoctions of シラス(small sardines) and other local shellfishes like サザエ turban shell and はまぐりclam.
Right across the street from Arukamak, you will see this speciality shop. Great snack if you're hungry. The chili pork buns are juicy but the chili is the standard Japanese affair of mild to the extent that you can hardly feel it. Check out its own website to see what else on offer. Plenty of Japanese old ladies go there and buy bagful to take-away.
As we all know, almost everything was invented into China (and then subject to multi-levels of corruptions through some get-rich-quick con scheme) and perfected in Japan. You might be surprised that sausages have gone through the same process. Chinese sausage 臘腸 was first mentioned some 2600 years ago but nowadays you don't know what additives you are really eating if you buy them from China, while mum and dad prefer those made in Canada. For a broader perspective, check out the wikipedia entry here.
Have you ever wonder why the Japanese gardens are so immaculate? Especially the garden around the Imperial Palace. A picture tells a thousand words, just imagine going through the garden performing such back-breaking routine clearing weeds 1-by-1!! And with Japan's aging problem, one should wonder how long before they need to import foreign workers just to maintain such magnificent gardens.
So if you read the previous entry about the link between the Narco dog and the Don Quijote shop, you probably thinking we are stretching things a bit. And now you see another entry with yet another mix bag of photos, and you are right!! We're going to show you how a dog dressed in Yukata（浴衣）can be linked to a piece of cake, albeit in beautiful wrapping, and a street carnival celebration in Tokyo.
So what's this dog got to do with dog roll and seafood? He is Cameron, the house dog for South Stream Seafood and apparently he is trading toys with dog roll. Seafood and dog roll don't sound like they come together. But in the case of South Stream, they do. In fact, when the delivery man comes to the door, often he has more meat than seafood, because the whole family are carnivores. Yummy!! We don't get dog roll all the time, sometimes we get beef rib bones on, which are good for our teeth. If we are good, we get these perhaps once in a month or two. Meanwhile, this weekend, mum and dad had all their meat and fish for both lunch and dinner from South Stream. When they went to this magnificent house in Barker Rd for a house-warming bbq, the owners got all the meat and fish there. Mum and dad like recommending go places to their friends. Remember to get us some dog roll this coming weekend!!
Last night mum and dad got all excited during dinner. You would have thought they just made something special like Kobe Wagyu. It was just a few stalks of beans fried in butter with a bunch of other veg. We have seen those every time we had our exploratory trip around the garden. Just a few sickly looking plant trailing up the trellis and not enough even for us to snack on!! Apparently, they tasted better but we had no way to tell as we were not invited to the tasting. Guess it's all in their minds, seeing the beans from seeds to plant.
First and foremost, Epsom salt is not your everyday seasoning like rock salt, sea salt, table salt, which are all variants of the same thing sodium chloride NaCl. It is the common name of magnesium sulfate. And you won't want to add it to your food like any seasoning, because as the Chinese name suggests, it's a laxative and often use in conjunction with lemon juice as a folk remedy for colonic cleansing. It's also a component of bath salt among some of its other uses.
Whenever Hong Kong gets a clear sky, we see many of these flying machines circle over our heads and we never really know what they are called. They are Black Kite, the most common raptor found in Hong Kong and they have adapted well to our city life and thrive by picking up rubbish and dead animals around us. We caught sight of one sunbathing on top of the scaffolding the other morning. Wish we can fly like them, but at least we don't need to pick on rubbish to feed ourselves.
