Last year, I wrote about Taiwan’s convenience stores being awesome. Japan’s are pretty awesome too. I remember one time, a couple decades ago, I found convenient stores in Japan selling Play Stations.
Japan has a reputation of being too expensive, and definitely, high end Japanese hotels and restaurants can really be ridiculously pricy, even for high end, but many a time, with family or friends, I have traveled Japan living solely off of convenience store foods. From an American perspective, that sounds pretty horrible, like chili-dogs and nacho cheese every day, but the above picture is of a soba noodles meal I bought at a local convenience store. I just brought it home, put it in a bowl, and heated it up. Even for health conscious folks, you can find some seriously delicious, rather fresh, and healthy choices. Just an onigiri rice ball would make a great meal, but even if you need something a little more substantial, let’s say a beef bowl, you can grab one at the local convenience store.
Microsynopsis: Jessica, still trying to make it as a realtor, discovers that she needs a license to sell houses. The licensing exam proves more difficult than she expects, so she is forced to mislead her family, to whom she has preached the importance of being the best. Eddie, under the advice of his father, pretends to be interested in makeup and hair as a way to spend time with Nicole. Louis finally brings home something he’s always wanted: a salon-style, sit-down hair dryer.
Bad: Forgive my hypersensitivity, but in nine episodes so far, every grown-up in either of the boys’ schools is an extreme caricature, one creature after another who exists only in poorly conceived television and movies, an intellectual shorthand for all the problems young people face in school. I don’t mind it so much when it magnifies the intensity of our memories of school or when it’s just funny, but the detention teacher actually calls students “you little turds,” which this career educator finds unbearably annoying. I half expect to hear, in a future episode, a teacher’s dialogue presented as “wah-wah-wah, wah-wah,” like the grown-ups in the Peanuts specials.
