Whiskey and Beer Exhibit

 

There's an exhibit running in Maruya Gardens right now by an artist, Hamachi Katsunori, who specializes in drawing bottles of alcohol in various settings. The artist and a female sales partner were in the room trying to sell the paintings, and that kind of put me off of taking pictures of the art. The cheapest works, which were smaller watercolor sketches, were in the $300 range. The bigger ones were $1,200. I didn't see any takers while I was there. According to his Instagram page, he's a local artist. I can see how his style would work for restaurant wall art, or food and wine magazine illustrations.

Some of the subjects.

From the doorway, I could see a projected video showing how the artist painted one of his subjects.

Twisted Wonderland Wafer Card

Found this wafer packet at Family Mart recently for 150 yen ($1.40 USD).

Fairly large wafer cookie, plus this plastic character card. The cookie was ok, but not really worth the money. The things I do for the blog.

Restaurant Chalk Art

"Come drink beer."

Kimetsu no Yaiba Poster Boards

 

New advertising boards up at Amu Plaza for the Demon Sword movie.

Dydo and Kimetsu no Yaiba

Dydo can coffee has decided to release an "original set" of Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Sword) can designs. I started seeing these at Family Mart a couple weeks ago, and then they showed up at 7-11. The difference in the way they are displayed is that 7-11 has all of the different characters lined up on a shelf so you can see them all at once, and pick the can you want to collect next, while Famima just has them in two slots of their refrigerator case, and you have to hunt through 20+ cans just to see what they have in stock. The coffee is sweet and creamered, and kind of tastes plastic. Not really recommended. 124 yen per can ($1.15 USD), including tax. The can says that there are three special designs that can only be found in vending machines, although I can't imagine wanting to put in the effort of trying to get all three characters at random like that.

Salaryman Kintaro Pamphlet

I found this pamphlet at one of the hospitals recently. It asks "What if Salaryman Kintarou was the president of Chuushou Kigyou" (small and medium-sized businesses). (I don't know if this refers to a specific company name in the manga, since I've never read it, or if it's just "a small business"). Either way, the story, for what it is, has one of Kintarou's employees complaining of various health ailments, but refusing to go to a hospital to find out what's wrong, and Kintarou berating the man for being stupid. The main point is that if the employee dies from something, it has a negative impact on company productivity, and that everyone that knows him will be sad.



In the end, the guy gets treated, and thanks Kintarou for being so concerned about the company's bottom line like that (I'm paraphrasing). Kintarou then tells the reader to go to the hospital for regular checkups.

Hedgehog Roll

 

There's a 100 yen ($0.95 USD) bakery shop in Tenmonkan that I visit sometimes. Recently, I found this "hedgehog" (hari-nezumi) roll, which had little pretzel quills, and a chestnut nose. Delicious.