my addictions

Since coming to Tsushima, i have inadvertently developed two addictions. The first is not too hard to guess: chocolate.

Now, most things in Japan are not sweet enough to me. Sadly enough, to my Korean friend, Japanese sweets are too sweet, which i can only assume means that when Korean people eat American sweets, they feel like they're going to go diabetic. ANYWAY, i managed to make it through my first month here without buying chocolate. But one random day at the grocery store, i decided to reward myself with a bar of DARS, and since then, it's been all downhill.

While nothing will ever compare to Plain M&Ms, a good ol' Crunch bar, or one of those fun size Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars you get during Halloween, I have managed to find a suitable replacement. And the winner is.... Morinaga Milk Chocolate! I discovered this based solely on chance. Fate made it only 78 yen. Fate made it mine.

But today i discovered an even more brilliant chocolate product. What is it? you ask. LOOK!

Literally! LOOK Cafe a la Mode is THE BOMB. So get this: there are 12 pieces of chocolate inside. BUT, there are 4 different flavors, so each piece is already separated and its own entity. The four flavors in this package are Espresso, Caramel Latte, Cafe Latte, and Almond Latte. MMMM MM! Espresso realllly hits the spot. And this lucky find was only 75 yen!

On to addiction number 2. So, if you know me well, i'm really into making stuff with paper, right? Well, seeing how I'm now a pseudo-teacher, that occasionally means making materials for my students. Particularly flash cards and games. So what do i do to make sure my materials survive being used over and over again? That's right. I laminate them! Every school i go to has lamintor, but not necessarily laminating sheets. SO, so long as i have my own sheets, i can use their laminator all i want. Sooo, the other day when i was shopping at a home improvement store, i stumbled upon cheap laminating sheets. 100 sheets of A3 film for only 1700yen! Japan has a weird paper system, so A3 is the size of two A4 sheets, A4 being slighty longer and skinnier than Letter-sized paper in the States. Bottom line: huge sheets of film. Cheap. Plentiful. Ability to laminate to my hearts content =)

I now look forward to making cards and the like. i used to worry over how long they would last, but with the advent of my beautiful laminating sheets, i can screw up a billion times and still not feel bad. Yay to making stuff with paper!

And now that you've probably started shaking your head at me and started thinking, "Oh, Ev," in your head, i'm going to stop rambling about chocolate and laminators. Even though they are both some of the most AWESOMEST things ever made by man ;D

--Evelyn