6th Grade Humor At Its Finest

For some reason I get a big kick out of finding the Japanglish on signs, while living here in Japan.  This is actually not very nice of me because EVERY Japanese person I have met here speaks very good English compared to my Japanese.  So I totally deserve it if they are all snickering behind my back. 

Still, I can’t help it, and I continue to snap pictures of any funny translation of Japanese into English.  It makes me laugh.

The other day I had the pleasure of being a chaperone on the 6^th Grade Field trip to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, Japan.  (That is, if you count four hours on a school bus with 60 some 11ish year olds pleasurable.) Turns out, they dig the Japanglish as much as I do and we had a blast hunting some interesting signs down.

First was at the polar bear exhibit.  

The kids walked around for the next two hours saying, “Hey, did you drop your thing?”

Of course, toilet humor is always fun for pre-teens and this sign was hanging underneath the tree where the sloth was allowed to climb over the crowd.

Poop = Good Times

Finally, and I can’t even say this is Japanglish, but this sign outshined even the giant pandas and the baby gorillas….

What sixth grader can resist the opportunity to use a swear word in their zoo field trip summary?  I don’t think there was a kid in my group who didn’t write about these guys.

Again…Good times.

Allie and Kaylie at Ueno Zoo – Tokyo, Japan

November 15^th, 2011

Baked French Toast - Breakfast for Swimming Champions

It’s no secret that I am SUPER proud of my two oldest girlies and the fantastically awesome effort they put forth for the Yokota Stingrays swim team.  But I am also SUPER excited to announce that my youngest girlie had the chance to swim this past weekend at our home swim meet.  Yay Amber!!!!

She swam the 50 meter back stroke in one minute and twenty-two seconds, and although she didn’t win any medals or ribbons, she was just excited to swim……

Just like her big sisters do.

And since the girls burn about a zillion calories during a swim meet, I have to carb load them with something yummy for breakfast.  It is fast and easy and you can make A LOT if you need to.

 This recipe works well with any kind of bread, but a nice French bread or sourdough is perfect if you want to be fancy.  I am not feeling that fancy at 5:30am, making sure everyone has swim caps and goggles, so this time I just used a left over baguette from dinner the night before.  It made perfect little dippers.  (Normally though, I use Wonder Bread…like a bad mom…who doesn’t make her kids eat whole wheat bread like I should.)

Baked French Toast

(recipe adapted from http://www.cooks.com/)

Ingredients:

·        1/4 cup butter

·        4 eggs

·        2/3 cup milk

·        1/3 cup sugar

·        1 tsp cinnamon

·        8 slices of bread (more or less depending on the kind of bread)

Turn oven to 400 degrees.  Melt butter in a 10 x 15 pan while the oven is pre-heating.  Mix sugar and cinnamon.  Remove pan from the oven and sprinkle sugar cinnamon mixture evenly into the pan.  Mix the eggs and milk.  Dip the bread into the liquid mixture and then lay it on top of the buttery sugar.  Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until bread begins to brown. (I usually go about 15.)  Lift out sugar side up onto a serving platter.  Serve with warm maple syrup and powdered sugar…or whatever French toast toppings you love!

Then, you better go swimming to work those calories off!

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