I'm really digging this band called Kill Hannah. Their style of music is the perfect blend of glam/grunge/electronic beats.

I'll be listening to them non-stop this week

I didn't do anything special.
   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

The thing that most frightens me about growing old is seeing my loved ones pass on.
   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

The love of success and the fear of not realizing my true potential. I'd rather try and fail than never know what I am capable of accomplishing.
   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

Take more chances - you only live once. Humiliation is soon forgotten.

   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

In my opinion, Bojangles is the ultimate in greasy fried chicken goodness.

What's your favorite fried chicken joint?

Blogrings have long been one of our most popular features, but a lot of people have asked us if we
can make them more useful.

This got us thinking - have you ever wanted to share specific posts with people in your blogring?  Now thanks to Patrick, you can!  A little while ago we added Weblog Pooling to blogrings... and just now, we added Photo and Video Pooling too!

Think of this feature as a collective pool of content that anyone in a blogring can post to. To see how it works, just click on "Send to Blogring" in the Editor.  And to see pooling in action, check out the pool for the Confessions of a foodie Blogring!

Have any of you ever been to Japan?

As an Asian American having lived most of my life in the US and Europe, I'm only just starting my exploration of Asia. I've been to Singapore, Malaysia, China... and a few years ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Japan.

My trip there was a truly wonderful experience. What made it even more exciting was that I had completely no knowledge of the language! So of course, when it came to ordering food, I - like many tourists - relied on the *pretty* pictures in the menu and showcases.

And they really were pretty! Never have I seen fake food look so realistic!

I was traveling with my family (father, mother, and sister) in one of the popular shopping districts of Tokyo. We've done a fair amount of traveling together and usually like to take a day or two off of the official tour to walk around and experience life as a local. Today was one of those days.

After taking in the sights and sounds of the fashion district (I'll have to write another post about that), we were quite famished and decided to take a break from the crowded streets. We found a quiet and dimly lit restaurant and decided to give it a shot.

The inside was decorated with lots of wood. In fact, everything was wood aside from the utensils and serving dishes. If I could imagine what the inside of a ship was like a hundred years ago, the decor reminded me of just that. There were also lots of things hung on the wall, like anchors, nets, steering wheels for boats (what are those called?), and harpoons... all really old and made of wood.

As we were trying to figure out what to order, we realized that this restaurant had no pictures in its menu! Everything was in Japanese. Somehow, we managed to converse with our waiter who recommended several dishes. We had no idea what we had ordered, but trusted our waiter with his recommendations.

What came out from the kitchen were basically what appeared to be breaded and fried pieces of meat. I believe in Japan this would be called 'Katsu' style. Tonkatsu is fried pork.. I'm guessing there is some variant of this for every meat.

One by one, we each took a bite. The texture resembled beef.. very fatty and oily beef. We attributed this to the frying process. But there was something else. Something that we couldn't quite lay our fingers on.

Something was fishy... Literally!

Either this beef had gone bad, or it had come from the most diseased of diseased cows.

Intrigued and a little concerned that we'd be seeing our lunch again in a few hours, we asked our waiter what he had ordered for us. In broken english, he replied, "Whale. Everything in this restaurant is whale. This is fried whale."

It all made sense. The meat had the texture of beef, but tasted like fish. What an odd combination... one that I'm happy to have experienced, but that I don't think I want to try again for a little while.

Have any of you tasted whale meat before?