Updating recommendations

My recommended title pages are grossly out of date due to my neglecting them for far too long. To make up for this I am:

1. Removing some of the out of print titles, some I am considering keeping as especially worthy of mention.

2. I will be adding new titles, each of which will be mentioned in this blog as I add them to the page. For now I will attempt to do at least one title, either anime or manga, a week, sometimes more.

3. I will also replacing dead links.

4. I will reduce the number of links to the Right Stuf web site, in the past I linked to each volume in a series. As these pages are recommendations for titles people may have not heard of I will link only to volume one and let the reader search for the later ones.

In the case of anime I will link to box sets when those are scheduled for release and remove the link to the first volume of the earlier release as box sets are significantly less expensive than buying a series individually.

Coping with a slippery eel

This week I have two cooking related entries. Both are used in preparing eels for cooking.

meuchi 目打ち

unagisaki (eel knife) 鰻サキ

References from Oishinbo A la Carte and Samurai Champloo for both entries.

Cloth under the cloth

Ever wonder what is traditional to wear under a kimono?

Or how upper class women dealt with hot weather under those layers of cloth?

This weeks entry is just on that.

koshimaki (hip wrapping) 腰巻

Not by Herman Hupfeld

This week I have a food entry.

Yuba.
Not to be confused with the California town, county or river and especially not with Yuba in the Herman Hupfeld song "When Yuba plays the Rhumba on his Tuba" which Rudy Vallee covered so well in 1931.

The yuba I have is:

yuba (soybean curd skin) 湯葉

Small dialect

There was a dialect in Edo and early Tokyo that was spoken only in a very small area of the city. This was the dialect of the Yoshiwara and has long since disappeared.

This week's entry is on this dialect which turned up in Ghost Slayers Ayashi

kuruwa kotoba 廓言葉

Reading on foot

Sorry folks I forgot to post notice on Monday that the new entry was up.

This is the one I referred to in the last posting.

tachiyomi 立ち読み

In any case additions are listed in the Anime Companion Supplement News page

A convenient five

So I was writing an entry for the supplement last week. Then I noticed that my notes had an example from the Ah! My Goddess Flights of Fancy TV series and misremembered that the example I was going to use was set in a convenience store.

So I figured I need an entry for convenience stores, then I figured I should do entries for the specific chains seen in anime and manga. Upon checking this morning I realized the example was in a bookstore, oh well it resulted in these 5 new entries:

am/pm

FamilyMart Co. Ltd. ファミリーマート

konbini (convenience store) コンビニ

LAWSON, INC. ローソン

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd. セブン-イレブン・ジャパン

What was I going to originally write about? You will have to wait until next week, or perhaps the week after to find out.