What's in This Box?

This is the box that Nova presented to me when I met up with her (during the visit mentioned in my previous post). Upon opening it, I found this:

Yummy! Kit Kats from oriental shores! Delicious! Admittedly they'd melted a bit before we had a chance to get them, thanks to the extreme warm days we've been having, but still, tasty nonetheless.

With most of these, the flavour component is within the wafer part, not just the chocolate. Here's the list of which flavour is which, and an explanation of how each tastes as we've tried them:

1. Sweet Potato! - actually, this one didn't taste strange at all, rather it tasted just like the White Chocolate ones we have over here. Though we did detect a slightly salty aftertaste.
   
2. Muscat Grape! - WOW. This one so far has had the most dramatic effect on out tastebuds. It really DOES taste like grapes. Slightly eyew.
   
3. Bite size Fruity flavour! These have a decidedly banana-esque taste, or perhaps it was tutti-fruity. But they were little wafer pieces about 1cm square! Yum!
   
4. Bean flavour?! Nova wasn't 100% sure, but I did some research, and it's just Red Bean flavoured white chocolate. I'm not sure why it has a Japanese fan on the front, though. I think the flavour of this one is a little subtle for my palate, as I couldn't detect anything different from the plain White Chocolate variety.
   
5. Mixed Berry - a blend of strawberry, blueberry and cranberry. The big surprise was that the sticks had white and pink stripes!!! Very tasty!
   
6. Blueberry Cheesecake - nice! The wafer had the berry flavour, and the chocolate was the cheesy part!
   
7. I think this one is Caramel Pudding flavour. It tasted sorta pudding-y but not really caramel-y. (maybe because it had degraded in the heat?) Nice, though!
   

It's interesting to see how adventurous the Japanese are with their treats. I used to think that Peanut Butter and Cookies 'n' Creme were pretty "out-there" for a Kit Kat, but I've really been put in my place!
What's more, these aren't even the most exotic flavours they have. You can also buy Kiwi Fruit and Cantaloupe flavoured Kit Kats... hint to Nova for when she goes back

I wonder if it would be possible to get some imported over here...?

A Trip to Visit A Friend - or, Friday the Thirteenth is So Not Unlucky

My friend Nova, who has spent the past year in Japan, has come back to Australia for a month to catch up with family and friends (and also attend to important medical appointments). I had the day off on Friday, so I went up to Melbourne to visit her. The last time I went up to the city was when we went to see the Game On exhibition at ACMI, waay back in March last year. If the exhibition ever comes your way, go and see it if video games are your thing!

I met up with her at Flinders Street, and caught the train back down the line to Clayton Monash Uni so she could get the results of her, um, "ladies' appointment". We had a very interesting conversation about the important medical checkups that the various sexes and ages have to suffer, over a light lunch... appetizing subject matter, you could imagine.
They have an Asian grocery there too, so we went in there to get something to drink. While there, I found some of the soft drinks that are sealed with a marble instead of the screw cap. I also found a can of this:

We haven't tried it yet, but Krys seems to think it's citrus flavoured. God, I would hope so!

After we finished our meal, Nova took me over to the Manga Library where she is a member of staff. Here's a picture of part of the library. It's not a big room, but it holds about 7,000 books. Here is Nova pretending to read something in Manganese for the purposes of my photo:

I got to meet some of her lovely friends and personally, I'm not sure if Kat and Nova are two different people; has anyone ever seen them both in the same room? I have, and I'm still not entirely convinced, read some English-language manga... and then I bought some souvenirs:

The bookmark and badges were made by the staff members (Nova designed the pirate-robot and ninja-zombie badges) and we really like them!
Att: staff - make sure you have more stuff for me to buy next time I come over! =)

I sat and read books while Nova helped out with their cataloguing system (good luck with that, btw!) and we realised that we'd spent about three hours there, and thought, "oops! there's probably other things we could be doing!"
So we went back to the city proper, and I had a look through JB Hi-Fi for some new music and videos. I found "Interstella 5555", "All Together Now" and "Beatles Anthology 2", all of which I'd been planning to buy but couldn't find anywhere else. Happy! I'm listening to the last one as I'm typing this.

Then we walked back to the station, but called into a clothing shop along the way, where we both bought a couple of T-shirts Nova refused to let me buy her some, even though I really could afford to do so! hey, that's the last time I try to buy her an extra birthday present..., and then we called into Hungry Jack's for a meal. We also lamented the fact that that particular branch of HJ's had stopped their "Free Drink Top-Up" policy, as it was really warm that day.

We still had about an hour to kill before my train arrived, so we went to Fed Square to see if the Ian Potter Gallery was still open it wasn't. ACMI was also closed for the day. We wound up sitting in the courtyard between the buildings chatting and enjoying the last of the sun:

And suddenly, it was time to go home!
The train ride back was exhausting. Someone on the train spent most of the trip complaining that he wasn't allowed to have a drink of beer and by the sounds of it he'd already had a few. I felt bad for him, though, because by the sounds of it he'd been fighting some of the fires across the state, and he would have been exhausted by that stage...

Things I've Lurnded from this trip:

1. Nova has has her ears pierced for the first time! This was prompted entirely by a gift of earrings for her 30th. She had actually only had the procedure done the day before, and she kept acccidentally brushing her earlobes and going "ow!"
2. Reading manga books "back-to-front" is disorienting, but gets easier with practice. No pun intended.
   
3. You can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
4. You can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
5. Nope - you still can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
6. Japan has some very strange flavoured Kit Kats -

but that's the subject of my next post! Stay tuned!

New Stuff Appearing On The Right

I've been adding photos to my Picasa albums for your viewing enjoyment.
Try clicking on the "Nature Photos" image on the right! You can also comment on them if you wish.

Leah - Thank you very much for the cool Dubai-themed Christmas gifts! I like the camel-themed playing cards and fridge magnets! And Krissy really likes the silky scarf!
Sorry we didn't get to meet over Christmas, but I'll try to send you something really nice!

Bird Disturbing

As you probably noticed, I've retired Dinkycam because I have a nicer camera now.

The other day I went for a walk around town to try and take some nice photos of the area I live in, especially since the weather has been warm enough for me to do so.
I figured I'd be able to get some pictures of the many birds and animals that come in to town. I've seen many different ones, like rosellas, cockatoos, kangaroos and koalas, but have never had a camera handy.

So, I set out for the bushland on the edge of town.

There's a trail that goes up behind the scout hall, through the trees. You'd expect it to go on for some distance, but suddenly, when you reach the top, you get to a barbed-wire fence and you see this:

It's an empty field, that goes on to - nothing. You see nothing but the grass. It's eerie. It's like you are almost on the edge of the world...
So I turned around, and took some pictures of the bushland, which looks nicer than the brown grass in the field.

Much nicer. There were heaps of birds flitting around on the ground and in the trees. There were many rosellas hiding in the shrubs, but I couldn't get close enough to take a decent photo of them. The camera only has a 3x zoom on it, which meant I could have taken a photo of some blobby thing sitting something in a tree, but nothing better I'm afraid.

After trying unsuccessfully to capture a decent bird picture, I gave up. I figured pictures of trees were easier to get, the subject not being fussy about posing for me:

I kept going around the town, and eventually took some photos of less-colourful birds, such as this magpie who wasn't sure what to make of me:

I then heard a strange bird call coming from one of the trees in front of me. I looked up, and saw a black feathered head peeking out from the leaves, and I realised that it was a black cockatoo! These are supposed to be really rare, almost an endangered species! So I quickly tried to turn my camera back on... but before I could hold it up, the birds (there were two of them in the tree!) flew off behind me. (sad)
Here's a picture of the tree where they used to be:

Onward, and I found some more birds in a different area. Mostly magpies and other common types:

But most of the other birds flew off before I could get a good snap of them.

But, it seems that not everything was scared off by me. A little green bug landed on my hand while I was taking pictures:

It was so tiny! I tried to make it fly off, but I guess it didn't want to leave me so easily. I managed to eventually coax it onto a fence post, as it wouldn't have been very convenient for the bug if I'd squashed it or something.

Then, I saw what I thought were a couple of birds, sitting under a tree! I went closer, and they seemed unafraid of me:

Then I found out what they were actually doing:

I disposed of the "birds" thoughtfully.

By now, I had just about given up on seeing any decent bird life. I had plenty of trees to snap, but who hasn't seen a tree before? But then I remembered that there were usually lots of birds down by the lake!
So that was where I went next.

As you can tell by these pictures, it was starting to get late, so I headed off back home.
On the way, there was another little pond where water birds were gathering, so I took a couple of pictures of those - but it turned out that there was someone else watching what I was doing:

I moved around so that they could get a better look at me:

I left them to mind their own business, and took some pictures of an old house down by the lake:

And then I decided I'd had enough fun walking around town, and headed home (taking some photos of ducks on the way):

By the time I got back home, my feet were so sore, they were glowing (I could tell, it was really dark by then). I didn't mind - it meant that I managed to get some exercise, and have something to put up on the blog that wasn't just me bitching about my teeth or whinging about work.

If you want to see some more photos of the part of the world I live in, [here's the link to the Picasa album that contains the rest]. It also contains some photos of our backyard, and our cats, if you're into that sort of thing.