{"id":11754,"date":"2010-05-16T22:02:47","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T02:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=11754"},"modified":"2010-05-17T00:16:47","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T04:16:47","slug":"wit-life-93-%e3%82%b5%e3%83%b3%e3%83%95%e3%83%a9%e3%83%b3%e3%82%b7%e3%82%b9%e3%82%b3%e3%81%ae%e6%97%a5%e6%9c%ac%e7%94%ba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/16\/wit-life-93-%e3%82%b5%e3%83%b3%e3%83%95%e3%83%a9%e3%83%b3%e3%82%b7%e3%82%b9%e3%82%b3%e3%81%ae%e6%97%a5%e6%9c%ac%e7%94%ba\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #93: \u30b5\u30f3\u30d5\u30e9\u30f3\u30b7\u30b9\u30b3\u306e\u65e5\u672c\u753a"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

My interpreting travels bring me to San Francisco this time, and I couldn’t leave without paying a visit to Japantown.\u00a0 I hadn’t been there in\u00a0a couple of\u00a0years, but I clearly remembered\u00a0 the array of restaurants, souvenir shops and an onsen-like spa I once had a soak in.\u00a0 I went with a friend who was craving something sweet and wanted a recommendation, so I suggested we get \u767d\u7389\u6c41\u7c89 (shiratama shiruko)<\/em>, one of my favorite Japanese desserts\u00a0following \u305c\u3093\u3056\u3044\u00a0(zenzai)<\/em>.\u00a0 We ended up at\u00a0Kissako\u00a0Tea<\/a>\u00a0where we were served by Hiro and Koji, pretending to be a charming \"\"<\/a>couple in the picture on the right.<\/p>\n

Kissako also had a nice selection of mochi\u00a0 (pictured left), including\u00a0strawberry, orange and lima bean, but I wasn’t blown away so didn’t sample any.\u00a0 I had heard of Benkyodo, a mochi specialty shop where it is handmade and there is more variety, but they are not open on Sundays.\u00a0 Something to be\u00a0tried on another trip…<\/p>\n

After we satisfied\u00a0our sweet tooth with the shiratama shiruko<\/em>\u00a0washed down by green tea, we took a walk around the mall which is a mix of\u00a0places\u00a0with yukatas and other Japanese clothing, a fairly large Kinokuniya, purikura booths, and stores selling Sanrio products.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking of Sanrio, there was an interesting article in the NYT\u00a0the other\u00a0day called “In Search of Adorable<\/a>,” regarding the company’s\u00a0strategy in finding a character to replace the legendary Hello Kitty who has dwindled in popularity at age 36.\u00a0 The article cites that “Hello Kitty lost her long-held spot as Japan\u2019s top-grossing character in 2002 and has never recovered,” something surprising\u00a0considering how you see her plastered everywhere both here and at home (she is beaten out by Anpanman!).\u00a0 However, the article discusses that part of her problem might have been\u00a0this very overexposure.<\/p>\n

Somehow replacement candidates such as\u00a0the pink dalmation Spottie Dottie and the\u00a0baby panda\u00a0Pandapple\u00a0have not been able to capture the same kind of merchandising magic as Hello Kitty, so it is back to the drawing board for Sanrio.\u00a0 Who will be their next character to take the world by storm?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. My interpreting travels bring me to San Francisco this time, and I couldn’t leave without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,70,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-food-drink","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-33A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11754"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11773,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11754\/revisions\/11773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}