Cheap Red Wine

Drinking wine from a box is something that a lot of people do. Myself included. I clearly recall the days (read: college) when many small get-togethers with friends involved at least one three liter box of the stuff. The wine wasn't phenomenal, but at that stage of my life I didn't really care. I believe my style of thinking was more along the lines of 'Three liters of wine for under fifteen dollars? OK, I'll take four, please.'

And that style of thinking is still with me to some extent, although I'm sure it resurfaces less frequently than my wallet would like.

One such instance was this past weekend when I picked up a 600 yen bottle of red wine housed in a plastic bottle. Apparently beverage behemoth, Suntory, has teamed up with a winery or two in France to produce a red and white Cocovin. They both come packaged in plastic.

Yes, plastic.

Big deal, right? Haven't we already gotten used to screw-top caps due to the cork shortage? Aren't we destined for packaging techniques that reduce shipping costs? Hell, some of the Beaujolais Nouveau sold this year in Japan hit the shelves in plastic. Not that the stuff was great wine or anything, but you get the picture. And I believe that was a pretty faithful rendition of what was going through my mind at the time.

Well...I guess I should have known better. As you probably guessed, the wine was a little bit...interesting. I'm now slightly suspicious that the wine shipped under the Cocovin brand has leftover Beaujolais Nouveau mixed in with it. It has that same kind of brash floral aroma that vaults out of the bottle as soon as it's uncorked unscrewed. And it's just as floral on the palate, but coming from me that's not a compliment. I started to get the feeling that I was sucking on a lilac bush. And the taste lingered for quite a while after I had gulped. Yikes.

White wines are the ones that have more acidity; it defines them, gives them a presence and a backbone that is expected and appreciated. However, the Cocovin red, for whatever reason, is light on tannins but heavy on acidity, especially in the finish. The result is a rather flowery-sour aftertaste.

That said, you get what you pay for, and I certainly did. For those who wish to head down this route, I would highly recommend putting the red in the fridge for at least an hour before opening. After the mercury drops, the aroma calms down and the aftertaste diminishes noticeably. At that temperature, you could argue that it's worth 600 yen.

Oh woe is us. Is this what we're in for? It seems fairly obvious that in order to sell people on the whole 'wine in a plastic bottle' thing, even if it's going to make our hooch cheaper, a lot of said wine better be pretty damned good. Otherwise we're not going to buy it. We'll be headed straight down the whole rosé path again (nobody would buy it until it was renamed blush, remember?). Anyway, message to Suntory: please try again.

But I digress. Come to think of it, two extra seconds of brain usage and I would have realized that I haven't bought wine in anything other than a glass bottle for a good 10 years. There's obviously a reason for that.

Lesson learned. I guess I actually care about what I drink now. The extra 300 yen per bottle is well worth it.

Cheap Red Wine

How to donate to the relief effort in Chile

Typing from a part of the world that experiences earthquakes on a regular basis, I think I can say with confidence that Chile just got rocked by something that the world rarely sees. For those who reside in locales not prone to major shakes, let me assure you that even the small ones, threes or fours on the Richter scale, can be downright terrifying. Add to that crumbling bridges and tumbling buildings, and what you have is perhaps the most destructive 60 seconds that nature is capable of.

It's time to help out. The mess in Haiti isn't even close to being straightened out, but we can, indeed we must, donate to the relief efforts in both countries.

Mobile Giving is again making it easy for people in the United States to use their mobile phones to donate:

Text the word “CHILE” to 25383 to donate $10
On behalf of the Habitat for Humanity
Text the word “CHILE” to 20222 to donate $10
On behalf of World Vision
Text the word “CHILE” to 52000 to donate $10
On behalf of the Salvation Army
Text the word “YOUTH” to 20222 to donate $10
On behalf of UNICEF

Online donations
It is also possible, and very easy, to donate online. Here is a short list of links if you want to use your credit/debit card to make a difference:

American Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders
Google Crisis Response
Oxfam (UK)
Unicef (Australia)

So let's get to it. The five links above are sometimes aimed at a specific country, but you can often navigate to the international site and then make your way to the page that is dedicated to your country of residence. And of course, if you know any other portals for making donations, please list them in the comments section below.

How to donate to the relief effort in Chile

Things that I'm excited about right now

Update [Mar. 25, 2010]

• The kichigai promotional site is up and running and can be found here.
  
• Another short film that I worked on last year, "Banki", is a nominee at the Tokyo Short Shorts Film Festival taking place later this spring!

________________________________

It's been a very enjoyable month thus far even if I haven't been lucky enough to win an Olympic medal. I've been busy meeting friends, both old and new, and working on a pretty large swath of projects that will hopefully make waves later in 2010.

Here are some of the big things that are making me smile:

Script. I'm currently working on the spec script for a film that we'll probably start filming in late March or April. I'm very stoked about this because we're exploring a new genre and looking to build on what we learned from the production of Little Tokyo (more info on that later).

Pre-production. Not exactly film-related, but in the prep-stages nonetheless, a couple of new web projects look like they may be getting off the ground soon. One is an information portal related to living in Japan and the other is a site about celebrity fashion. My role in both projects is mostly on the developer side which is probably hard for some of you to believe--especially regarding the fashion site.

Filming. Japan Booze Blind continues to grow within the Japan Eats network. The word 'network' is apt here as we've been experimenting with live tapings of the show, and the next one is scheduled for March 28th at 3pm (Tokyo time). Live tapings via Livestream are a blast because I can interact with the audience in (nearly) real-time. The show on the 28th will deal with my favorite spring pastime, hanami. This post over at Tokyo Terrace will give you a good idea of what we've been up to.

Post-production. A film that I worked on last fall, Kichigai (Japanese title: Wasted), is in post production now and will hopefully be screened at a film festival later in 2010. There's a website being developed to help promote the film, but I've been advised that it's not ready to go live, so I'll hold off on posting a link just yet.

Promotion.  We'll be hearing back next month about whether or not Little Tokyo will be screened at the 2010 Short Shorts Film Festival. Please keep your fingers crossed  for us. Another film that I had a leading role in, Banki, will also hopefully get screened. Fortunately (for me, anyway), Little Tokyo and Banki are not entered in the same category.

Of course, there's also the redesign of the Tokyo Swallows website to be excited about. That took quite a bit of hair-pulling and face-slapping (my own) to get under control, but I think that it was definitely worth it. There are still several things to get sorted out, but I think that we'll have a better feel for what we need to do once more content gets posted within the new framework of the site.


And as many of you know, I've jumped face-first into the world of social networking sites (SNS). Facebook, Mixi, Twitter, and Disqus to name a few. I've actually hooked this site up with Disqus, a service that aggregates the social aspects of several SNS platforms, so make sure to leave a comment at the end of this post and see how it all works. I'm very interested in seeing how it helps users keep track of the ongoing dialogue as it moves and changes across the web.

Anyway, one thing that I'm very grateful for is that I've been able to easily reconnect with a bunch of people that I didn't have any idea how to contact, and that includes both family and friends.

So those are some of the things that I've been thinking about, stressing over, and working on recently. Just need to stay motivated and keep working with the talented people around me. Hopefully I can keep up.

Things that I'm excited about right now

I'm just the translator, so I don't pull a commission on this

A couple of close friends will be headed out this way in a couple of months, and of couse that thrust my mind into tour guide mode.

What are we going to do for fun? Where are we going to eat? Who are we going to hang out with? Day trips?

And then I remembered that a little language ability can go a long way for travelers in these here parts. Then I remembered that I translated a Japanese phrasebook for novices last year called, Konnichiwa, Nihongo! (basically: Hello, Japanese!).

It's mostly aimed at anyone who has just arrived and is planning to stay for a bit (ie. they have a work visa), so it's only available on the Japanese version of Amazon at this point. However, I'd venture to say that it would be very helpful for anyone staying in Japan for more than a couple of days.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone planning a trip to Japan.

*Embarrassing note: they must have run out of space because they forgot the last 'i' on my surname (you can see for yourself if you flip through the pages (virtually) at the Amazon link above).

I'm just the translator, so I don't pull a commission on this

Tokyo First Snow

The snowflakes are so large you can nearly hear them hit the ground tonight.

It always makes me happy to this kind of thing--especially over here. I suppose I wouldn't be quite so pleased if I owned a car, but it'll all burn off in the morning anyway.

Makes me a little nostalgic for home, I must say. Time to throw the mock fireplace disc on the DVD player and crack open a couple Capri Suns.

Tokyo First Snow

Japan Booze Blind: Third type beer

Japan Eats is steadily building up content, and the feedback that we're getting from friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook has been been fantastic!

There are now four JBB videos loaded on the site, and our food show, Tokyo Bites, should make its debut in February. We're definitely very excited about this--especially since the title of the site does not currently match up with the majority of the content that we've produced thus far.

If you have any suggestions for what we should do a future show on, whether it's Japan's interpretation of Korean soups such as sundubu or something as standard as sushi, please feel free to either comment on this site, over at Japan Eats, or on Twitter.

Or you can also e-mail me at pellegrini [at] japaneats [dot] tv.

And while you're at it, please drop by Japan Eats and watch the latest JBB episode which covers three beers produced by brewing-behemoth Kirin. My two guests on the show are Rachael White, food-blogger extraordinaire over at Tokyo Terrace, and Joe Nakamura, an actor that I met while filming last year's Hagetaka.

Japan Booze Blind: Third type beer

Mike Salinetti's tour

My cousin, Mike, left for Iraq (via Kuwait) a little bit before Christmas, and he's posted a set of photos here.

Sounds like he's planning to upload more photos in the future, so check back again soon.

Mike Salinetti's tour

Product flying off the shelves

Happy New Year!

Looks like someone is going to be getting a nice, belated Christmas gift.

Tenshodo, an upscale and storied jewelry shop in Ginza, was relieved of more than three million dollars worth of luxury watches during the New Year's break. Thieves drilled a hole in the concrete wall of the building, went down into the basement of the building, and absconded with some 200 timepieces.



Elsewhere, this time at the Shinjuku branch of Tiffany's, an English-speaking Asian man rushed out of the store with four engagement rings in his possession. He was not immediately apprehended.

It seems looks like some people have created their own version of "lucky bag" in the midst of the economic downturn. With nearly one-third of Japan's largest companies considering cutbacks in hiring, it is perhaps not very surprising that petty theft is on the rise.

Meanwhile, Joshua "Jake" Adelstein, a former crime beat reporter in Japan and author of the briskly selling Tokyo Vice, sat down for a very intriguing interview with the Japan Times in which he explained some of his views on what makes the underbelly of Japan (as well as the rest of the country, for that matter) tick. Japanese publishers reportedly won't go near the book at this point, so an English version is the only option for interested parties.

And concurrently, in Kobe, one of the subjects of Adelstein's book, the Yamaguchi-gumi of Japan's inimitable yakuza, went into overdrive in an attempt to appease the local population by handing out cash to children at the annual mochi-making (rice cake) event that takes place at the end of December.

Local police believe that more than 1,000 people attended the event last week during which some lucky children made off with as much as three hundred dollars.

'Tis the season!

Product flying off the shelves