I know what you're probably thinking. Oh, Anjali, you're sighing, really. You've been in Japan for over a year now. Surely you can resist the urge to buy a candy just because the name looks like "ass."

Unfortunately, my friend, the answer is no. No I can't.

It's easy to spot foreigners new to Japan; they're always pointing out the spelling mistakes and unintentional jokes on all the signs written in English. "Look! That hair salon says parm instead of perm! I'm gonna take a picture!" It seems like it'll never stop being funny, like that time in ninth grade when my best friend and I decided our Spanish teacher looked just like the lead singer of the Spin Doctors and we kept cracking ourselves up by whispering "What TIME is it?" to each other, over and over for a week straight. (If you watched 120 Minutes in 1994, you may be familiar with the song. It's not good.)

But -- like our Spanish teacher, who turned out to be totally pervy -- it stops being funny.

It takes a lot for me to point out bad English now, but something about Asse just struck a chord and I had to try it. Maybe it was my memory of Collon, I don't know. I wasn't expecting much -- but Asse is good!

I suppose I should point out here that the correct pronunciation of Asse is "assay." But whatever, I'm still calling it "ass."

So ASSe is a thin piece of milk chocolate filled with what can only be described as the substance that fills a 3 Musketeers bar. It's a good balance of fluff to chocolate and the chocolate itself is decent and not overly sweet. Asse is also packaged nicely, the rectangles of chocolate laid out neatly in their compartments, displaying the cool art-deco-esque patterns printed on their tops. Really, it's one of the best-looking candies I've eaten in awhile.

This is a limited-time, winter candy, but I hear there is a year-round Asse available. I'll keep you posted.

...Okay, I'm finding it difficult to not end this review with a bad pun, but I promised myself I wouldn't. Feel free to leave your own in the comments, though!

On Monday I was lucky enough to meet up with Molly, Mariko and Kelly in Nagoya for dinner as part of Mariko and Kelly's whirlwind tour of Japan on Superbuzzy business.

At an izakaya we ate a couple different kinds of tofu, an ume-daikon salad and really yummy maguro croquettes while attempting to take "candid" photos of our meal. It was Kelly's birthday, so after dinner we headed over to a tea-and-cake café called Harbs, which seems like a bizarre name until we opened the menu and saw they served "harb tea."

We all ended up with truly enormous pieces of cake (I had marron-chocolate), but unfortunately the waitstaff chose not to don silly hats and sing Happy Birthday to Kelly, even though Mariko informed the waitress of the occasion. Kelly also politely refused our offers to loudly sing to her in the middle of the café. But that was okay, we all had a good time anyway. Thanks, you three!

With its unappealing flavors (Roast Pretz or Grilled Curry Pretz anyone?) and nearly-pornographic cover photos (check out Cheese Pretz), Pretz has intrigued me for awhile, but it wasn't until I spotted the new French Toast Pretz that I decided to give the line a try.

With the popularity of all things French here, it's no surprise to see a rise in the number of french-toast-inspired snack products (from 0 to 1, if you're counting). I can only wonder if we'll soon be asking for a small order of "furenchi furai" at the local Makudonarudo instead of "furaido poteto." ...And will it mean the terrorists have won?

In the mean time, French Toast Pretz stands alone on the shelf, perhaps signaling the wave of not-actually-French taste treats to come. Its aroma is overwhelmingly maple. Its flavor and texture are that of a thin, slightly sweet breadstick. If I eat one, I immediately want to munch on another one, but if I stop for minute or two, I have no desire to ever eat them again.

It's the smell that really repels me, probably because the same fake-maple scent fills my local entertainment super-complex (movie theater, bowling alley, karaoke, etc.) thanks to the caramel popcorn the movie theater makes. The reek hovers over everything, as choking as over-applied cologne on a junior high school boy, and settles in my hair and on my clothes for the rest of the night.

One of the four packages of Pretz is gone, but I will probably never eat another. However, I may try bringing them to the movies to see if the two fake-maple odors cancel each other out by some miracle of olfactory science. I'm not holding my breath. Actually I am, but it's only because I don't want to smell French Toast Pretz.

I think it means I've been eating too much candy, this eerily-timed Pretz review....

Last year I think I spent most autumn weekends knitting and watching movies. This year I am somehow so busy I have had to close the books on all further social engagements between now and late December. I'm not joking, nor am I bragging. (I almost always prefer knitting to carousing.) I think it's because this is my last autumn in Japan and I feel the need to gorge myself on fall colors, not to mention persimmons and pumpkin. In a month everything will have quieted down, muffled by coats and possibly snow, and that's when I can hibernate.

Until then, my momiji-iro burns at both ends. Enjoy its lovely light.

Last year I was bit by the kurogoma bug. Symptoms included: ordering anything and everything that included black sesame, mixing black sesame paste into whatever dessert would have it, and peering closely at anything packaged in black, to see if it was black-sesame flavor.

A black sesame roll cake filled with black sesame frosting that I ate almost entirely by myself marked the demise of the Kurogoma Days, but luckily the Kinako Era almost immediately followed and continues deliciously to this day. I'll say no more about what kinako is and what you can do with it, as these facts are already well-documented.

Kinako is not as easy to find as black sesame on the candy shelves, so I was excited to find Kinako-mochi Choco, made by Tirol, the same geniuses who brought us Coffee Rhumba. The outer layer of kinako-flavored white chocolate is sweet and nutty, like peanut butter fudge or Reese's Pieces without the candy shell. But it's the inner piece of chewy mochi that makes this candy addictive. At first it's a little strange. Mochi -- pounded glutinous rice -- tastes like nothing, after all. But it's chewy, a chewy little nub of nothing-taste that transforms the kinako-choco from a smooth, pleasant treat into something more substantial and interesting. Beyond the taste, I am now craving the texture of this candy.

I also really love the orange packaging and the tiny picture of kinako-dusted mochi on the wrapper of each piece. The candy's mascot seems to be a cheerful mochi ghost, perhaps the ghost of mochi already eaten? Why he's smiling at the imminent demise of his mochi brothers is a bit mystifying, but maybe it's because even he can't resist this candy.

Bridge and maples at Yokokura Temple.

Despite soggy skies, I headed out with a group of friends on Sunday to look at the momiji (maples) in rural Tanigumi, where a fellow JET lives. We first spent an hour at a blood drive festival in the center of town, waiting for one last person to show up. When he finally did and we were getting ready to leave, the old folks suddenly cranked up the tunes, broke out some wheelchairs and asked us to dance with them. As in, us (the young ones) sitting in the wheelchairs and them (the obaachans) wheeling us around. Or waltzing us around, as it were. We accepted, of course. It was bizarre and lovely.

"I am more than twice your age, but I want to wheel you around. どうぞ!"

Then we were off to Kegon-ji, a big temple in the hills, famous for being the last stop on the 33-temple Saigoku pilgrimage. It was beautiful in the rain, all green moss and damp stone, the perfect backdrop for the red and yellow maples. For 200 yen, you can venture down a dark staircase, under the main hall, and grope around a narrow, pitch-black corridor in search of a smooth rock. If you find the rock, you have touched Buddha's heart. Or reached enlightenment. Or something. I found the rock, but then I got turned around and ended up exiting through the entrance and blocking the passage of several nervous and blinded Japanese people, so I can't say how enlightened I actually am.

Near the main hall was a building covered with strings of one thousand origami paper cranes, which are supposed to help those who are sick. There were also hundreds of baby bibs, apparently because it is the place to pray if you are trying to get pregnant and the bibs are a sort of thank-you card to the gods.

Many thousands of cranes.

Then we left for Yokokura-dera and its annual Momoji Matsuri. We arrived near the end of the festival, but just in time to score some free miso vegetable stew and watch the throwing of the mochi. I've seen matsuri-mochi-throwing before, but this was different. Mainly because of the loud speed metal they were playing as everyone was scrabbling around. It was like a Motörhead concert circa 1981. With maples.

The mochi pit.

But things calmed down after that and I was able to walk around the temple grounds and visit the hall that holds a real Japanese mummy! He was a monk who fasted to death on Mt. Fuji and they keep him, sitting in lotus position, in a raised gold box.

Finally, toes soggy, pockets bulging with mochi, we returned home. I promptly made a delicious miso soup with my mochi and ate it in front of the kerosene heater, the perfect end to an autumn-end day.

(All the pictures I took on Sunday can be seen here.)

Miyajima.

After a fun and filling Thanksgiving dinner last week with about thirty other JETs and their Japanese friends, I headed off to Miyajima and Hiroshima for the weekend. Miyajima is most famous for having one of the Three Best Views in Japan, dominated by a massive torii (shrine gate) set out in the ocean. At low tide you can walk up to the gate; it really is gigantic and beautiful.

The momiji were in full color at Momiji-dani Park, where I witnessed this peculiar scene: a woman who seemed to be showing her cell phone to a deer and asking, "Mieru? Kirei na? (Can you see? It's beautiful, isn't it?)" over and over again. I thought, Oh no, this obsession with anthropomorphizing cute things has gone too far! But then, as she was running around wildly pointing her phone at various trees and asking no one in particular if they could see, it became clear she was on some sort of video call and was trying to show the person on the other end the autumn colors. I liked it better when I thought she was talking to a deer.

Hiroshima. The Atomic Bomb Dome can be seen on the left.

In Hiroshima, I was looking forward to visiting the Peace Memorial Museum and Atomic Bomb Dome, insofar as one can look forward to something so saddening and shocking. I guess I feel it is important, as an American living in Japan, to see firsthand the terrible legacy of the atomic bomb. To that end, the Atomic Bomb Dome was a powerful sight, a blasted-out building in the middle of the city's clean newness, a reminder of the singular strength of the bomb and the ruined city it left behind.

The Peace Memorial Museum was more factual than I expected, with a lot of information about what led up to the dropping of the bomb and the science behind it. The exhibits in the older wing focused more on the victims of the bomb; the display of stained, burned students' uniforms and belongings was especially moving. I learned that a large number of students were working outside at the time of the blast, helping to demolish buildings in an effort to reduce the risk of fire, and many died instantly or soon after. In some cases, the students' uniforms or lunchboxes were the only things their families could find in the wreckage.

One thing that made a strong impression on me was the complete lack of vengefulness or blame in any of the exhibits. More than anything, the message seemed to be: There was a terrible tragedy. This is how and why it happened. Please help us make sure it never happens again. It made me feel even more deeply embarrassed to remember the planned U.S. postal stamp commemorating the atomic bomb, which this store still proudly sells.

Several of the teachers at my school thanked me after hearing I visited the museum and dome. And all I wanted to say was, "No, I'm sorry!" But "sumimasen" just doesn't seem like enough.