If nothing else it’s a catchy name but in this case Tantakatan is so much more, it’s a tasty drink that features highly on my list of vices these days.
As part of my “Eating Better” plan for this year i’ve also had to look at what i’m drinking and while i can never replace beer i can reduce my intake considerably by drinking Tantakatun.
I can’t begin to describe the taste of it, i guess flowery would be a start. It’s very aromatic which makes it appealing and it can either be served straight or with water, i take mine with water as you can see here with my bottle keep at the local restaurant.
Tantakatun is in the Shochu family, a type of distilled beverage native to Japan and this particular one comes from Hokkaido with a main ingredient of Shiso.
I saw my first example of Tilt Shift Photography last week on Danny’s site and then the same day Paul bought it up on the way home from work.
Now i believe there’s a few different flavours to this “Tilt Shift” business but the ones that appeal to me the most are these tilt shift miniature fakes where a lifesize location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model.
I did some sniffing about on flickr and came up with this great set of photos there’s a heap of great ones in there so check more of them out.
This one is students at Dokkyo University.
Some roof tops in Saitama.
An ever increasing topic in the news and blogs around Japan these days is suicide by inhaling Hydrogen Sulfide made from household detergent.
It seems everywhere i turn yet another suicide is reported with Hydrogen Sulfide being the cause or method used is probably more appropriate.
While i understand there may be many people out there in dire straits and they feel the only way out is to take their own life, the problem actually affects the wider community when they use Hydrogen Sulfide as the method – hence a greater uproar in the community.
While reading the Daily Mainichi today the headline “3 Japanese found dead in car; police suspect lethal gas made from detergent” caught my eye … only to see the “Related Articles” below it and see another 9 all relating to the same thing.
“Earlier this month a man killed himself by mixing detergent in his house on the northern island of Hokkaido, releasing toxic fumes that drove 350 neighbors from their homes” reported the mainichi. The full article can be read here.
Suicide is a massive issue in Japan and the figures from The government said 32,155 people killed themselves in Japan in 2006, giving the country the world’s ninth highest suicide rate.
I had come across a campaign against suicide organised by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government here a couple of months ago which was specifically promoted on trains, the other most common method of suicide in Japan. Maybe they need to rejig this and target this new means to an end.
