Video Product Reviews

So out of sheer tiredness and delirium the other day, I decided to make some YouTube "product reviews" for things that I've bought that have moving parts/light/sound/et cetera. Here are three, two of recent purchases, one of something I've had for a few years now. If you want to see the strange little wonderful gadgets I buy in action, want to hear what I sound like when I'm sleep deprived or both, here ya go. Enjoy!

T-Scale Success!

It took a fairly decent amount of time to get the train itself set up, but it was worth it! My tiny T-Scale can do laps without jumping the track, now. I'm not entirely thrilled by the fact that the track wouldn't fit on my bookshelf's top, er, shelf & that I had to put it on the bottom level of one of my Detolfs (Detolves?), but what are you going to do? It was slightly too wide for the bookshelf's shelves to situate it, but it fit perfectly on the Detolf's shelves. I bought the green grass matting to sit the track on, and the Detolf has glass shelves except for the bottom. I thought that the matting looked extremely tacky on the glass shelves, so I wound up sticking the train on the bottom shelf.

The problem with this, though, is visibility. For a train that's only 3mm wide, it's kinda hard to spot it all the way on the floor level of a shelf that's already absolutely packed with PVC figures, Nendoroids and a Real Action Heroes Zero/Lelouch. ><; Perhaps I should get rid of my PC so I can turn my desktop into a model railway, heh. I made a video and took some pics of the train running. Amazingly, the front and rear light up with the JR logo and the rear red lights. They also change when you reverse the direction of the train. The wheels are magnetic and hold the train to the track, which is good for such a small scale (1:450!) of train. The trains come in sets of 4 cars (so far, anyway) the outer two cars contain the working lights, and the inner two contain the cars with the motors. Not exactly what I expected, considering with both real and model trains that I've encountered so far, there's usually one car with all of the power, and that's the locomotive. I don't know if the magnetic attraction in the set of end cars is weak, or the extra "heft" of the motors in the center cars contributes to holding them in place, but the rear car (no matter which one I use) strays off unless it's set just so. The magnetic attraction of the outside sets of wheels on the end cars seems weaker, and it's difficult to set them into the track manually and have them stay. When you're working with materials that are that small, though, it's difficult to get such tiny parts to work in concert with one another. I got it working, miraculously, after about 2 hours of tweaking but who knows if a slammed door or something heavy (like my foot) coming down onto the floor will knock it off track. =P
These pics are preliminary, as I was just trying to get the train itself working. I plan on decorating with the people I bought, and also plan to perhaps buy a few buildings/trees/other elements to add soon.

Right on Schedule

Well it's 4 in the morning, no better time to put that train set together than now, eh?!

Was going to put it here, but the track (sadly) didn't fit. I kinda wanted to put it somewhere of prominence. However...

It ended up here, on the bottom floor of one of my Detolfs (Detolves?). Moar to come!

日本文化

Tokyo Noodle Drops

I decided to try out some of my J-List schwag today, and I was really intrigued in general to try the "off/regionally flavored" candies that I had gotten. I started with the Tokyo Noodle Drops, as they seemed the most likely to be captured in a candy well, as opposed to the Sasebo Burger Drops or Tako-Rice [sic] Drops. Which are actually taco rice, タコ/tako being octopus, something got messed up on the package due to the similarity of the words and the fact that tako is so widely eaten in Japan, and the Mexican type of taco seems to be limited in availability to Okinawa for the most part. (Which is kind of horrible news for me should I move to Japan, because Mexican is my favorite kind of food. ;_;)

Generally, this sort of thing is a quintessentially Japanese concept; "wacky" candy that 99/100 people would never even think of, even Japanese people. I mean there are those Harry Potter jellybeans that Jelly Belly has been making for the past few years that were bacon and booger and vomit flavored, but these are meant to be actually appetizing, methinks. The tins are certainly decorated in a way that looks "serious" - or more precisely - cultural.

First, if you purchase one of these bad boys, I'd say don't leave the house without Hercules or a blasting cap in tow. The sticker holding the lid on is merely a formality, because I'm pretty sure the lid is welded on. Once I pried it off with some scissors, I was allowed access to the tasty drops. They smelled, surely enough, like ramen. There are also silicate packets included in each tin to make sure they stay dry.

Upon popping one in my mouth I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting them, since they had an aroma, to be powerful. The first thing I tasted was that typical "candy" taste you get when you eat a hard candy. It's probably some additive or something, but that actually balanced the overall taste out. I then tasted ramen. Not ramen flavoring, but it tasted like real ramen in a bowl, with broth. It was subtle enough that I wasn't getting grossed out, but not so light that I was guessing at whether my mind was pulling off a placebo effect and tricking me because I wanted my $3.50's worth out of the tin I'd just bought. Being the scrutinizing individual that I am my mind naturally thought: "How is it that we can put ramen into a candy but somehow we've gotten cherry, watermelon and apple wrong for so many years?" (I actually hated cherry fruit until about 2005 because of the medicine and candy taste ruining it for me over the years, now they're my favorite fruit ^^)

Even now, the aftertaste is like I just ate a bowl of ramen, it's ridiculous. I'm still a little shaky about what the burger and taco drops will taste like, but I have a feeling you'll be seeing another rave review soon. The full line of these drops snacks can be had here, at J-List, but get em fast because I understand they're popular and the manufacturer has been running out of them!