Your Japanese word of the week is...

"kowareru" 壊れる which means "to break", as in to cease functioning. Actually, in my dictionary is says "to make useless".

Interestingly, the suffix -chau can be added to verbs if the action was unwanted or unintended; accidental, as it were. It can also be made into a past tense as -chatta.

So "kowarechatta" 壊れちゃった can mean something that's broken... unexpectedly.

Here's an example of some broken things I've seen this past week... (note- I took all these pics with my phone, so forgive the quality)

This person's taste...

Sure, I realise everyone has different tastes... I have good taste, for example...

Jokes aside, this isn't the first pink car I've seen. I've seen a pink Mini before and that actually seemed ok since it does sort of fit the Mini's cute character.

A 911, however, has no cute qualities. Porsche's insistance on having the engine in the back means it's like driving a sledgehammer and 911's (particularly the Turbo models) have a long standing reputation for spitting drivers off the road... backwards...

Any car that's built on and thrives off an image of death does not deserve to be pink...

Him...

I saw this man in Shibuya last week.

I've mentioned before that the Japanese seem to like taking their freedom of speech to extremes by standing somewhere public and shouting their thoughts at passersby.

This fellow, however, particularly irked me as he was spouting off about how the Chinese were at the root of all the Japanese's problems. He claimed that the culture has snuck its way into Japan and the people were ruining his little Tokyo haven.

I guess someone forgot to tell him that the kanji in his name came from Chinese... like the writing he's using on his poster... or even the pronunciation of many of the words in his speech...

My stomach...

There's a ramen shop near my house. It's small, seating probably only 15-20 people. And it's almost always closed, the two guys working only a few hours in the afternoon and another 4 or so hours in the evenings. They're also closed on Tuesdays and Sundays, and close early Saturdays.

And yet, there's always a massive line-up.

Since I got off work early last week and noticed the line was short, I gave the place a shot.

This mega-bowl of ramen costed about 700yen and it nearly made me explode.

For starters, the pile of noodles is really a pile, not just a handful plopped into a bowl filled with soup.

The soup itself it made with a very delicious pork stock.

The pork itself is not the processed slices you normally get from most other places. It's pulled off a pork roast and served in liberal amounts.

Lastly, there are 5 different toppings and, as you can see, they're served in generous quantities.

And while the portion size itself could kill you, what really gets you is the amount of fat and oil in it. They seemed to have taken the meat from pigs with cholesterol problems and then offer both "extra fat" (abura 脂) and a "spicy oil" that seems to be more oil than spice.

Being me, I asked for all the toppings just to try it out haha.... It was extremely tasty but I probably won't be going back until May =P.....

I'm sure some people go weekly and how they have avoided heart disease is beyond me....

English...

I saw this in an arcade I was walking by...

It says

kochira kara wa hairenai-yo

which essentially means you can't enter (or, rather, go beyond) this point.

What gets me is the English translation they've offered...

"It doesn't put it here"

Sega should really invest in a better dictionary if that's the best translation they could come up with haha...