pot luck

I've mentioned before the savoury snacks one finds in combinis in Japan. Some are awful - pizza bread with mayonnaise; a bread roll stuffed with far too much butter - or worse, cream. But occasionally you come across a nice one. & think that this will be one of the things you miss when you get back home. For example, today I stumbled across a ham & cheese stuffed roll/ triangle of bread. It tasted very good - almost like a pizza somehow. I noticed the tomato sauce inside & then I re-read the title - Italian ham and cheese something. It was very nice. I will have to see if the Rifu branch of Family Mart stocks the same snack, for a mere 126 yen.

I was eating this on the train back home from some St Patrick's Day celebrations in Sendai. (Yes I know it's 2 weeks late, but I think the organiser- an Irish JET was soaking up the fun in Tokyo on the 17th...) I noticed on the train, a girl eating her snack - or more probably, dinner. - A Starbucks frappucino & chicken Mcnuggets. Such a snack could not be found anywhere in Hanoi. 'Oh why?' you may ask. - It's the only place I've visited that has neither Starbucks or McDonalds: excellent!

As it turns out, after I ate my sandwich, I started reading 'Forfeit' by Dick Francis. I'd picked it up for 100yen at the St Patricks Day thing, on a charity stall. It should make good reading for next week at school- I got through 3 rubbish novels last week! Anyway, eager to finish my chapter/ paragraph, or something, I carried on reading when the train arrived at my destination- the final stop. But the mcnuggets girl kindly came over, seeing I was engrossed in my book & realising i could end up back in Sendai if I didn't budge, and told me, "Rifu desu." (Ah bless- only in Japan!)