Happy Christmas Day

Christmas Day landed on a Thursday this year which is convenient as this gives us an extended long weekend of 4 days off from work. The boys have long outgrown Santa, but they had a lot of fun exchanging gifts with each other. Lately, they had been obsessed with the "Engrish.com" website where people post Asian Products with badly translated English. They always get a kick out of reading the product labels. In keeping with that, they felt compelled to write bad engrish notes to each other, along with their gifts.

We are a family of Japanophiles. We all take an interest in and pretty much love all things Japanese. As a family, we have already visited Japan three times. Since we hadn't been there in over a year now, we had to find a way to get that fix by visiting Asian Markets which carry Japanese, as well as Korean and other Asian goods to use as stocking stuffers. In general, we don't snack a whole lot, so we figured Christmas was as good time as any to indulge in some offbeat snacking foods. The snacking chips with all the unpronouncable ingredients were interesting, and I'm sure are not at all healthy for us. Sometimes, its not just the engrish which makes us giggle, but the cute pictures depicted on their products which makes us laugh out loud. I'm not quite sure how healthy some of the 12-grain snack bars are, but since the one ingredient listed did not include anything resembling a chemical, we think it should pass as a healthy snack.

That evening, we visited my favourite niece, Patricia, for Christmas Dinner. We brough along some Rumaki (Bite size Chicken Liver & Water Chestnut Bacon Wraps) as appetizers. But after the Big feast we had on Christmas Eve and the continuous snacking and testing of our appetizers, we really didn't have much room for another big Christmas dinner. Regardless, I did my best to consume all the good food that Patricia's mom had prepared for us. I'm not sure how I did it, but I somehow managed to squeeze in a small piece of the homemade Blueberry Cheesecake that Patricia had lovingly made for us. I'm so glad that we have one day of rest before we go out for another eatingfest at our good friends, the Nakamotos, this coming Saturday.

After all this non-stop eating, I seriously will have to go on some sort of Butt-reducing exercise regiment.


Christmas morning has arrived

The boys' gift notes to each other (You can click on it for a larger view).

Colin had a little more to say on the back

This was featured on engrish.com because they "Promise the Best"

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese Omelet

When you eat this, your vegetable family will become Karate fighting poataoes?

This is suppose to taste like a bowl of curry

These taters are jumping for joy because they get to be curry flavoured

Tomato wavy chips....

with a delicious tomato taste

Cuttlefish wav chips...

hot spicy pepper. Tastes just like from a grilled cart street vendor

Healthy Japanese snack

ABC (Already Been Chewed?) healthy snack rolls

Classic Engrish

This is one long ingredient. It's good for one year, if only we can find the Best Before Date

Christmas Dinner at Patricia's place with the girls.

Brother-in-law Wayne and my guys