Day 29: Häagen-Dazs I have a great new reviewing style for you! Freebies???

Have you ever had to grammar check a speech about yourself? How about be asked to add some nice adjectives to it? What about be told that they really want adjectives that show off how kind, polite, intelligent and basically down right awesome you are? 

No? Well neither had I until today. Now at first this may sound like a humble brag, and in a way I suppose it is (Jesus this is my blog, you would think I was allowed one or two). This may also sound awesome, but to an Englishman, even one as immodest as I have been known to occasionally be, I found this to be one of the most awkward moments ever. And, if you know anything about british TV or movies it is a British persons worst nightmare. Not to mention our comedies bread and butter!

Pretty much all of The Office and Extras is how I Felt this morning

While being asked to do this i just sort of nodded, smiled then looked off into the distance pretending to think but instead just hoping the moment would end and that the teacher asking would come up with anything i could give a very sincere sounding "hmmmmmm.... yes, i think that sounds ok"when in reality had she suggested "Steve is an insufferable waste of space and we shall be glad to see the back of his ugly head." I still would have agreed to it. Not if she called me fat though, thats the line!

Can't argue with that!

So, moving on, I promised to answer the question "Why am I leaving?" Let me tell you now, the stuff such as the weird ice creams and 1 month of ramens etc., that actually has a little to do with it, but maybe not in the way you might think.

I love that stuff, I live for the weird stuff in Japan, the new and exciting foods, places or moments. However, they are now coming fewer and further between. Having been here for 3 years I now recognise the seasonal drinks, look forward to the summer pineapple alcohol, the mikan (tangerine) season and so much more. I am not surprised when I see strange and weird things. The things that used to be weird to me, brushing your teeth at work, not turning on the AC until it is over 30 degrees, shouting IRASHAIMASE whenever someone enters a shop and so on, are no longer strange to me. I still don't get any of them, but they don't have they air of wonder any more.

But I totally got the Slurping thing DOWN, in fact that is going to be hard to stop when I'm in the UK

In short my life here has sort of become exactly that, a life. It feels less and less like an exciting adventure and more like a regular everyday life. And I feel that at that point I have to make the decision: If I am starting to make a life, what do I want from that. Unfortunately, Japan is not what I want for my future life. I'll explain more about what I do want another time, but for now, I know Japan isn't it.

Now don't get me wrong, there are many upsides to it not feeling like an adventure, I feel at home here, I have a Japanese mother, and I feel like Japan very much is a second home to me. Much like my real home country, I can say anything I like about it, but if you, an outsider were to be in any way disparaging about it I would defend it to the hilt.

I like the etymology of "to the hilt" and wanted to eloquently show it to you with my sweet drawing skills

I have concluded that this must be where the term "mother country" comes from from, cause I can call my own mother fat all day long, but if you once call her fat I'm going to punch you in the face. (Mum, you aren't fat, I never called you fat! Sorry!) And now I have 2 mothers and 2 mother countries and if you call any of them fat I'm going to be mighty upset. Or if you call me fat for that matter. Remember the line!

Well, with all those real thoughts and feelings and stuff boring you lets jump straight back to this crazy ice cream I mentioned.

There is a joke somewhere here about it looking like vomit and carrots always being in vomit, just imagine I made it and laugh

Yup thats right, some of you guessed it (by some i mean one, and she was the only person to guess, but shhhhhh), its's carrot and orange ice cream. Sorry did I call it ice cream, what i want to call it is an abomination, but that would be unfair to this guy:

For those who don't recognise him, he is one of The Hulks enemy's called Abomination (The best jokes are the ones you explain!)

Lets just call it Häagen-Dazs's affront to humanity. Now I have eaten a LOT of weird food, I ate insects in Thailand, I have eaten jelly fish, I'm working my way through as many edible mammals as I can, pepsi flavour crisps (remember those) the list could go on. Suffice to say I rarely won't finish something even if it tastes bad, and I firmly believe if you don't like something you should keep trying it every so often and in different situations just to affirm that you don't like it. But this little monster I couldn't even eat 10% of.

And I shan't ever be eating it again!

(Häagen-Dazs please feel free to send me free samples of your other ice creams to review with such class as comparing them to obscure comic book characters. Who knows I may compare your Green Tea flavour to The Watcher or your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough to X-23)

((Hope any of you comic book people liked those references or anyone else liked having to google them to get what I'm talking about))