Nothing screams "SUMMER!" like a bear with a watermelon for a head, don't you think? Especially when said bear is also eating a piece of watermelon (perhaps sliced neatly from the back of his own head?).

Suika means watermelon and Suika Gumi, being watermelon-flavored gummies, has to have the most unoriginal name ever given to a candy whose mascot is an animal with a head made of fruit. Clearly, most of Kabaya's budget goes to the design department. (And, hey, this is the same company that gave us the adorably-packaged, boringly-named Puchi Purin Choco, or Petite Pudding Chocolate. Another of their candies is called, simply, Gumigumigumi. It's a gummy, FYI.) But I'll forgive Suika Gumi its snoozeworthy name; the package and the candy itself more than make up for it. A mere 100 yen gets you a cup filled with small, wedge-shaped gummies in two flavors: watermelon (red) and sour watermelon (yellow). There is a rare melon soda flavor (blue) which may or may not be included in the cup. (Mine didn't have any.)

Both flavors have that juicy bite of a good Japanese gummy, though I slightly prefer the sour watermelon, just because I'm a sucker for sour candy. The texture is chewy and substantial, but not rubbery. The best part is that the gummies are not individually wrapped, the way so many gummies in Japan are, so you don't feel like a disgusting glutton when you're done eating because you don't have to face a mountain of wrappers left behind. I'm all for a candy that doesn't leave easily-counted reminders of just how many pieces I ate.

It's possible that, after eating so many watermelon-flavored gummies and staring for so long at a bear eating a sweet sweet piece of his own watermelon head, you will begin to crave a piece of real watermelon. I did. But then I realized an actual watermelon costs at least $20 at this time of year, unless it's a square watermelon, in which case it would probably be closer to $80. That could buy you a lot of cups of Suika Gumi, you know.

>> New-old skirts from a shop in Osu.

>> Tomatoes growing on the balcony.

>> Flooded fields of new rice.

>> Kewpie bananas in tropical shades.

Only seven weeks left in Japan!

When I was young, I was all about trying to cook before I was old enough to use knives, stoves or ovens. This resulted in a lot of dishes involving melon balls, and one unfortunate microwaved substance I had intended to be a peanut butter cookie. I lusted after the Easy-Bake Oven (and never got it). If only my young self could have had some Naru-naru Mi Ni Naru Mikan flavor. (Mikan is mandarin orange.) Targeted at kids with culinary aspirations but no access to knives or heat, this is a candy you make yourself with a series of powders in packets. I decided to try it out and finally pursue my Easy-Bake dreams of making sweets using only mysterious packaged ingredients and plastic utensils.

The kit came with three kinds of powder, a mixing tray and a plastic utensil you snap out and assemble yourself. Powder 1 looked like Crystal Light, Powder 2 looked like Jell-O and Powder 3 was just colored sprinkles. I felt like I was engaged in some sort of chemistry experiment. Crystal Light + Jell-O = ???

While you'd think I would be able to easily follow the illustrated instructions written for children, I could not. Putting together the Magical Gummy Wand (my name, not theirs) was fairly straightforward and reminiscent of assembling childhood boardgames like Mousetrap, but I made a mistake when mixing the powder with water. The instructions clearly show Powder 1 being added to the water, but since I had already dumped the powder into the tray so I could take a picture, I added the water to the powder, which caused a silty layer of Powder 1 to remain stubbornly undissolved at the bottom, no matter how assiduously I stirred with the Magical Gummy Wand. For some reason, I thought tilting the tray a bit might help, but all it did was dump some of the water-powder mixture into Powder 2, creating a disturbing bright pink crater which immediately began to coagulate into a gelled mess. I covered it with more Powder 2 and tried to pretend like it didn't exist.

Forging ahead, I began to spin the Magical Gummy Wand first in the water-powder mixture, then in Powder 2, back and forth. The tray has a little shelf on each side for resting the wand as you spin. I was amazed the first time I went from Powder 2 back to the water -- I had expected some of the powder which had collected on the wand to dissolve away, but instead it turned translucent and firmed up instantly. It really was a Magical Gummy Wand!

But after going back and forth maybe five times, the crater I had created early began to emerge, a depressing reminder of my inability to follow basic instructions, and I started to feel kind of repulsed by the powders and sticky, growing gummies. I decided to sprinkle on some Powder 3 and taste my Mikanstein (Franken-gummy?) creations. They were soft, similar to warabi mochi or coffee jelly, and not too sweet. The mikan flavor was barely discernible but, really, you're going to buy Naru-naru Mi Ni Naru Mikan for the fun of making your own gummies, not for the gummies themselves.

I suppose it's for the best I never got that Easy-Bake Oven. Don't let my awful-looking final product scare you off. I fully believe that if I were a Japanese child, I could have made beautiful, perfect gummies. I mean, the kids can make dorodango; gummy mikan should be easy. Also, check out the wonderfully weird commercials for this candy and its cousin, Neru-neru Neru Ne!

(This entry has a very special soundtrack. Please open this link in a new tab or window and listen along as you read.)

On Saturday my friend Mami had a birthday party at a small bar in Gifu and I decided to sew her a little something as a gift. A few hours before the party, I flipped through a recent issue (Vol. 27) of Cotton & Paint and saw a fairly easy-looking tissue holder with a pocket for a handkerchief.

Both tissue and handkerchiefs are necessities in Japan, as public restrooms sometimes don't provide toilet paper and rarely provide paper towels for drying your hands. (And carrying a hankie around means less waste. Mottainai!)

I didn't have time to embroider anything complex, so I settled for a simple cross-stitched "M." The fabrics are all Japanese cottons and I especially love the blue floral print. The ribbon was a 100-yen store find.

Mami seemed surprised and happy to receive a handmade gift, but honestly, not as happy as she looked when a huge group of us surrounded her and sang along with Fannypack: "Hey Mami! You sexy! Hey Mami! You beautiful!"*

Hey Mami! It's true!

* I thought I had never heard this song until Saturday, but I realized tonight that it was featured in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which I think demonstrates how completely I have tried to banish that movie from my memory.

(I have yet to address the wide array of breath-freshening gum and mints available in Japan, and considering I have less than two months left here, I thought I'd better hurry up and review three at once.)

Mintia Plum Cocktail flavor reveals the enthusiastic, stigma-free attitude towards alcohol in Japan. While gum and mints in the U.S. are often used to cover boozy breath, this mint provides that special post-cocktail breath one tiny tab at a time. The first strong plum wine taste is followed by an odd banana flavor and then a mellow mintiness. For such a small mint, these are amazingly effective. And they come in the coolest box ever: the size and shape of three or four stacked credit cards, it has a hinged opening with a little slot that catches one of the mints and dispenses it perfectly, avoiding the Altoids tin problem of people getting their grubby fingers all over your mints and the Tic-Tac box problem of dumping out three mints when you only wanted one. I'd buy Mintia again just for the box, and this flavor specifically for its peach-colored box!

Speaking of booze-flavored breath fresheners, Xylish Platinum Mint Chardonnay flavor is a special gum released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Meiji candy company. The first impression I had when chewing it was of champagne, fruity and sparkling (though it doesn't have any ingredients that would give it a fizzy feeling), which did somehow make me feel more celebratory, even sitting at my desk at 10:22 AM on a Thursday. Sadly, the wine flavor lasts less than a minute, transforming first into a plain grape fruitiness and quickly becoming blah. It does somehow leave you with wine-drinker's breath, but I like to think that drinker is more Sophisticated Wine Taster, not Cackling Wino.

Recaldent Ocean Fresh flavor was purchased out of the desire to discover what "Ocean Fresh" tastes like. Sea salt? Wakame? Whale meat? It turns out a fresh ocean actually tastes like a pine tree. Or something equally sharp and herbal. Who knew? It's not unpleasant, and the sharp crackle of the candy shell breaking under my teeth combined with the piney flavor and gradual xylitol cooling makes for an exceptionally refreshing gum. Eventually, the herbal taste gives way to a sweet, minty gum with a longlasting flavor. I'm going to bring this with me on my trip to Himaka Island this weekend and see if the effect is enhanced by frolicking on a beach while chewing it.

Sorry for the infrequent posting lately. Believe me, a week without Candy Friday hurts me more than it hurts you. Lately I've just found myself gripped in the kind of procrastinating terror only an imminent move across the ocean and complete life change can bring. I've observed a pattern in my procrastination, when comparing this move to my original move to Japan two years ago, a pattern involving crafting while watching an entire TV series on DVD, instead of organizing, packing or doing other more useful activities. I'm calling it Forthcoming Upheaval Procraftination, or F-UP for short.

So yeah, there's been a lot of Alias and Orangina knitting and general F-UP behavior around here lately.

Two summers ago, it was actually much worse. Not only was I terrified about packing up and moving my entire life to an unknown place, I was also dealing with leaving Rob, a.k.a. Captain Tenderheart, a.k.a. the Person Whose Absence Drains Joy From My Life. So in the final month before my departure, I suddenly decided one day to pick up embroidery, a hobby abandoned for the previous two years, and make him a pillow with Darth Vader's head on it. For hours and hours every day, I worked on the pillow while re-watching every existent episode of The Office (UK version) with my sister, who had never seen it before.

I felt calm, chain-stitching and grimacing along with my sister at David Brent's awkward antics. I didn't have to worry about what I needed to bring, what I would forget, what would be useless, and what I would be missing. Who I would be missing. I forgot to dwell on the possibility of Rob not being there when I returned, of him finding someone else, wondering if I was gambling away the greatest person I had ever known.

He loved the pillow, of course. What self-respecting Stars Wars fan with a mild interest in stylish interior design wouldn't? He also hugged it fiercely and pretty much constantly during the first several months I was away -- sorry, honey, the secret of your softheartedness is out! -- which led to me musing it must have soaked up so much love it was like a sodden sponge of super-love. I'm halfway convinced that's how it survived a fire.

And here we are. T-minus six and a half weeks until the Pacific no longer separates us and somehow we are still as strong as ever. Maybe even stronger. It's hard to feel regret for those hours spent making something for the one I love the best rather than, say, sorting old bank records. Maybe it's okay to F-UP once in awhile, when you really need to.

It's 80°F (26°C) with a disgusting 94% humidity and soon I'll have to ride my bicycle home in a thunderstorm. And it's my birthday. Let's talk about something happy. Let's talk about ice cream.

While trolling the frozen treats aisle last night, I was drawn to a box of Pino Mint, mainly for it's blueness. I thought at first it might be flavored with sea salt, like the other blue ice cream I ate in Japan, but it was just mint, plain and simple. Why do mint and blue not go together for me? Mint is green or maybe white. Blue is sea salt or bubble gum ice cream. Pino is a decent brand of ice cream bonbons, the kind of thing I always imagined a beautiful, indolent housewife might eat while lounging on a daybed in her bathrobe. Perhaps blue, conjuring images of tropical seas and dreamy Paul Newman eyes, better suits this lifestyle than green.

A tiny blue stick is included for mess-free bonbon eating. Handy! After a few minutes of sitting in my sweltering living room, the Pino were the perfect texture, soft but not squishy yet, the chocolate melding with the ice cream center. Not brittle like the coating on a dipped cone, this chocolate was yielding and a little bitter, making the whole thing taste a lot like a frozen York Peppermint Pattie. Um, I'd consider become an indolent housewife for these.

Though one small annoyance is that the box doesn't close very securely, let's be honest: these are so good, they won't be sitting around your freezer for very long.

Sorry I didn't get a picture of the blueness. It looks a lot like the picture on the box. But still...these don't taste blue at all.