Go away mucus.

Hey there.

I'm sick. I was SO sick yesterday that I could barely function to eat dinner, which was quite rare for me.

When I get sick, I usually get sore throat or headache but I usually function fine.

But this time, I have to blow my nose even at the platform of train station and spit out gross mucus every 20 seconds or so. On top of that, my head feels like I'm carrying a 3 tons of cow or something.

Anyway, so much about my symptoms.
When I had to spit out mucus every 20 seconds ( now it's more like every 1 minute. I'm getting much better!!), I was thinking how wasteful it is to use tissue for every shit that I spit out.

And then I remembered. Apparently there was a thing called "Mucus Jar" in Japan. In Japanese it's called "Tan-Tsubo" (たん壷). I was not sure if it was something mythical or real. I've only vaguely heard of it.

So what do I do? I googled.
And yes, there was.

As gross and disgusting as it sounds, in 1951, there was a law referring to this "Mucus Jar." In short, there were mucus jars in train stations, or even IN trains for people to spit out this bacteria-filled crap.

WHY???? Mainly to prevent the spread of tuberculosis, by having people spit out the contagious stuff into A JAR. Well...I guess it seemed like it was a pretty good idea...
But think about it. If there were such jars, obviously someone had to clean right???? Ew.

Instead, I present alternative solution.

How about personal mucus jars that are filled with chemicals that turns mucus into sand which is harmless. We can even use the sand as nutrient for plants.
Can someone invent stuff like that?

Instead of using tons of tissues, ultimately killing trees OR using mucus jars that may expose the jar cleaners to the evil tuberculosis bacterias, we can turn our gross shit to something that actually is nice. Pretty hybrid, no?

These jars, however, are not in stations or trains anymore, since tuberculosis is quite preventable in other ways now. THANK GOD.

Sorry if anyone read this before eating. I just had to share, cause the idea of mucus jars was too gross not to share.


I'm not sick anymore, by the way. Thanks for caring.
What, you forgot about the fact that I was sick cause the topic of this post was too gross. OH WELL! Sorry!

ALERT ALERT! Watch your blood sugar level!

Hey Guys!!!

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG Time No Write!

Since I have been SO absent from this little blogging of mine, I won't even bother trying to come up with excuses for WHY I haven't posted anything in 1 year.

But thanks to those who told me to "start blogging again!" for such a random and kind of pointless blabbing outlet of mine.

Anyways, let's go straight to today's topic eh?

Something pretty interesting happened to me today at first day of work, after the world turned to the year 2013, safe and sound, despite all the hysteria about "OMG THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 2012 Decemberrrrr!!!"

Remember how I wrote in one of my first posts that Japanese people go to shrine in New Year to wish for a good year to come?
So my team at work decided to go to nearby shrine right before lunch today.
It was around noon time.
And the shrine is called Atago Shrine, which is famous for having a long ass stairs like this:

It may NOT look like much, but each step is like 30cm high alright. 

Legend has it that a man who climbed up these stairs by horse had gotten fast track to promotion. (Mind you that the legend is set in ancient times of Samurai and such) 

SO, What Do I Fucking DO? 

Climb up the stairs as fast as I can before ANYONE ELSE for the fastest promotion. Greedy greedy. tsk tsk. 

After furiously running up those magnificent things, I stood on top, looking down on my fellow teammates. I was taking pictures of those who were struggling to climb up and was making fun of them and what-not, when I started feeling strange....

I started seeing stars in my eyes, I was nauseous, I was dizzy, I had urge of vomiting, I was shaking like an alcoholic, I felt disoriented.... so on and so forth.  

All of the above? Symptom of goddamn glucose crash after intense exercise. 

Shame on you YURI SHAME ON YOU!!!!! All these eating and sleeping and being lazy had finally hit me physically, after blindly lured by this legend of fast promotion. More embarrassing thing was that Everyone else seemed totally and completely FINE. What. I mean what's wrong with these people. 

So, Moral of today's story

Do NOT climb up 100 stairs too fast when:

1. You are Hungry

2. You haven't exercised in a long time

3. You are doing this because you are purely greedy and doing it just to show off and want to laugh at those who are climbing slower than you. 

Because you are just going to feel sick and look stupid. Those people who went with their pace were.... uh .... smart. 

I felt fine after lunch though. Oh maybe next time I should eat a banana or something before climbing up. 

So here's another moral of today's story:

Promotion does not come easy, and you should stock up before you furiously try to climb to the top... 

What a great analogy. Yes. 

But please watch out for your sugar level. I swear it is NOT a good feeling to have your blood losing all this precious sugar. 

See you soon in next post!! 

you lucky people.

HELLO YOU LUCKY READERS.

Why lucky? 

Because you got 2 posts in one day.

That's a miracle.

You don't get 2 posts in the same day on Yuri's blog.

OH BY THE WAY

I just started twitter so if you.... just IN CASE you wanted to follow me, my twitter name (is that what you call?) is yuriistweeting 

SO ORIGINAL RIGHT?

I wanted to be "yuriisontwitter" but apparently it was already taken. Fascinating. 

I really have nothing much to tweet about but I gave into the peer pressure and the temptation to look "cool and trendy."

.... I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE THINKING.

'YURI YOU ARE SO BEHIND THE GAME, JUST LIKE WHEN YOU STARTED THIS STUPID BLOG."

well.... I know I'm actually just a tech deaf trying to keep up but just a loser who is unable to do so... 

whatever. bite me.

that's all.

How to get rid of garlic smells.

Ok, so last post was quite heavy and it had nothing to do with "guide" per se.

But I just had to do it!!!! I needed an outlet for my confusion and anger. And therefore this blog was  the victim.

But let's talk about something totally random and trivial and not-so-useful for some but extremely useful for others.

GARLIC. Right. Let's talk about garlic.

I'm sure most of you have eaten it.

It's pungent. Yes. That may be an understatement but it smells.

I love that smell in the food personally, but some despise it.

But I'm not here to talk about how to get rid of the garlic smell after you eat.
What? That's what you expected? Well, too bad. haaarrhaaarrrr

I mean you can brush your teeth and chew gum or something!!
I heard eating apple also erases the garlic breath but not sure.

What I'm talking about is the garlic smells that you get on your HAND when you cook with it!!!


What??? I don't actually handle garlic, I just buy the ones that's already processed in jars???




Well, I have one word for you: GET OUT.

For those of you who use ACTUAL garlic and suffer from its lasting smell on your hands, here is the solution:

Any guess what this is??????

Wanna know??

Wanna know????

Drumrolll.....

It's just a pebble!!!!!

JK. it's a stainless steel stone.

Believe or not, after you handle garlic, you just use soap and just use this stainless steel pebble to rub your hands and finger, magically the un-sexy garlic smell goes away. 

now you can go ahead and touch some hotties in a bar without those people telling you "are you a chinese cook food by any chance?" and get into an awkward situation. 

you can thank me later. What? where to get it? 

I don't know.... my mom had it and forgot to ask.... JUST AMAZON IT GODDAMNIT.

Let us cut the expenses of "being healthy."

You know what I realized recently??

Being healthy is extremely expensive.
Yuri, DUH...??

I'm sorry...

But really I just understood the cost of being healthy.
Aside from health care and insurance and all things political,
if you are consciously trying to be healthy, it's gonna cost ya.

For example: um...gym?
It's freaking expensive!!!
I used to go to this crappy place on 14th st and 2nd avenue and that cost me $50/month!!!
I mean, it is quite cheap for a gym but still!!!!! $50 just to be physically active and have your muscles toned.

What??? You can just run around outside??
Good point. But that's only if you live in a place with some amazing weather ALL YEAR AROUND.
Who runs around when it's like - 400 degrees outside!!?!?? only freaks. NOT ME. thank you very much.

And just fyi I hate gym. I HATE GYM. I just don't like working out i suppose.
But I just don't like the smell of it, sound of it and some creepy old men of it. jk about last one. no, not really.

So what does Yuri do when she needs to stay active?
WELL I used to live on 5th floor walk-up so I thought that would suffice my physical activeness. kind of.
Believe me, one round-trip of those stairs is quite intense.
Especially when you forget something at home and run back up and down and then run to subway station.

HOWEVER, I moved back to Tokyo where my apartment building has elevators like any other civilized places, I don't get my daily dose of work out.
NOW WHAT WOULD YURI DO??

Simple: I LOVE YOGA. really I love it.
Let's say the exercise really suits my body type.
Treadmill just doesn't cut it for me.
In fact, last summer I went to gym everyday and ran for like 40 minutes AND ate healthy
AND I FRIGGING GAINED WEIGHT.
Apparently my body absorbs food a lot more when I do cardio. Not sure. That's my theory anyway.

But YOGA, really helped me few years back.
I did yoga everyday for 2 weeks and I lost significant amount of weight
when I went to summer school for my junior year summer...I think.
I am also naturally quite flexible so yoga does not pain me much.

ANOTHER BUUUTTTTTT!!!
Yoga classes are EXPENSIVEEE!!! WTFFFF!!
One class is like $20 bucks (about 2,000 yen?) PER CLASS MINIMUM!!!
Some places charge you good $40 per class. EFF!!

So REALLY, what would Yuri do???

Well, one word. YOUTUBE.
Through youtube I found this amazing site that shows you all the full-length yoga class for free!!!
Apparently they need some donations to keep the site running...
Maybe I will donate when I'm in a much more generous mood...

But for now, THANKS YOGAYAK!!!
Wait, does everyone know about this site??
Am I like waaaaay behind all these phenomenon??

....Whatever.

For those who want to enjoy the free classes,
Go to: http://yogayak.com/

The website design is quite terrible and needs some help,
but it's good enough for me just to watch the classes..
I've been doing this for past 3 days. Let's see how long this new hobby of mine will last.
I will update you on that. Or not. Maybe. Will see. Whatever.

Pre-Graduate Syndrome

Hi all!!

As you may know, I am graduating from my university (finally) at the end of this month!!!!
And sadly, I am leaving New York City for good after that to start my career in Tokyo....tears.

So I will probably have to re-edit the description of this blog.... more tears.
But I think it would be interesting to see the culture of Japan / Tokyo, from different perspective that I acquire during the 4 years of my studies and living in New York.

It is an understatement just to say "I learned so much in these 4 years."

That being said, I would like to talk about my thesis project a little bit.

You know, senior thesis. A synonym of "death" in undergraduate study?
It was not required by my program to take senior thesis to graduate from undergrad, but for some psychotic reason, I decide to take an intensive thesis class for my final semester.

Why, you may ask.
I want to ask myself too.

WHY YURI WHY?????

I'm not sure really. I think I wanted to do a project that really interests me to sum up my life as a student , to have some closure for my glorious undergrad days.
And for glorious, I mean gloriously painful. Whatever that means.

My thesis class was only one semester long, as opposed to traditional one year, so I guess that was more light-weight than what people do normally.

Do you wanna know what I did for my thesis???








....I did some project about food and eating...

What? "omg yuri that's so predictable, you dirty pig"?

Shut up.

Anyways, it was a painful process, just to summarize.
Oh yes, painful.
I am glad to say, however, that I am quite content with what I came up with and accomplished in the end.
But do you know what happens when you put so much time and effort into something and  you are almost done with it? Like right before you do the big final presentation which is one of the most important presentation of your entire undergrad program???? Can you guess what happened to me?







SEVERE WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME.
and I'm not kidding this time. I thought my PBSD (pre-beginning-of-semester disorder; please refer to my older post) was pretty bad, but now that I experienced this withdrawal attack, it makes PBSD some kind of bullsh*t. well, I guess it was...

The symptoms of my withdrawal syndrome:
1. Insomnia
2. Mood Swings
3. Anxiety attacks
4. Panic attack
5. Hives (sudden skin rash accompanied by mosquito bite-like bumps all over body)

WOW. THANK YOU THESIS. WAY TO SUM UP MY UNDERGRAD STUDIES!!!!!

Do you know how to treat this withdrawal syndrome????







I don't. Fail. If anyone does, please let me know. Thanks.


ANYWAYS! Congrats to all my fellow classmates for completing their undergrad studies and overcoming this deathly journey!!! Now the real life starts!! woohoo.... damn it I should have failed a year so I could have delayed the real life...

How to cure the sore throat.

Hi!

The radiation leaks are freaking me out,
although I understand that medias have been exaggerating things
and I should know the level is way lower than the normal level.

BUT IT'S STILL FREAKY!!!! AHHH!!!

In the midst of the chaos, I get sick. Yikes.
Aaaand it was my spring break week. Double yay!

UGGGHHH WHY. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME UNIVERSE?

So I wake up one morning, feeling this "pinch" on my throat.
I'm thinking "hmm weird...OH WELL!"

The next morning, I feel something poking my throat when I swallow.
And I go, "I don't know what it is... MEH. it'll get better."

And then, the next morning....

OMMMGGGG MY THROAAAT!!!

Every time I swallowed something, I felt like thousand needles piercing my throat.

NOT A GOOD SIGN.
But honestly, I was not going to waste $25 on my copay, just for my doctors to tell me things that I can find on googles.

So naturally, I googled "sharp sore throat on right side."

The downside of google search: it can scare you to death. Some folks claimed that they had the same type of pain for 6 months!! WHAT! Go to the doctors at that point, freaks.

Anyways, I found handfuls of home remedies that could work for sore throats... here:

1. goggle with solution of 2 tbsp of vinegar and 1 cup of water. (OMG this BURNS, and honestly I'm not sure how effective it was... but it numbed the pain for a while I think...) and I swallow the solution after...ew

2. Spray the Propolis thing.(this burns too but it temporarily relieves the pain...and it's kind of sweet)

3. Black tea with honey...(it doesn't burn and kind of relieves the pain...maybe I was imagining. ok NEXT.)

4. Some Chinese Herbal thing (it kind of....worked?)

5. Goggle with solution with salt + baking soda + water (I'm not sure anymore)

6. Tylenol syrup med (almost did nothing)

7. Tons of sleep (hmmm magically the pain is less the next day)

8. Boil slices of gingers in water, then drink that solution with honey (OMG....finally...?)


After all these trial and errors, I could finally yawn without my throat feeling like being ripped apart.

My conclusion to the best solution: Tons of sleep + any of those remedies

I think I had some canker sore on the back of my throat.
So much for freaking out.
Goodbye sore throat, goodbye spring break....

Tears...

Superbowl Sunday!! = Wings+Beer+other greasy food day!

SUPER BOWL!!!!

I never cared for the actual game of this world's most viewed sport event.
I don't even understand the rules of football, what the heck.


BUUUTTTT
wings and beers and chips and salsa for the game??

YES PLEASE!

I feel like I've been talking about food a lot lately. Maybe I should might as well convert this blog into a food blog................................



nahhhh. There are way too many food blog anyways.
Talking about food blog, you guys should also check out this blog, foodgawker.
It's an awesome eye-pleasing blog that shows pretty pictures of yummy food.

Anyways, superbowl must come with greasy food and lots of beer and obnoxious people.
One problem arises, however, by eating lots of superbowl kind of food; heartburn.

Yes, I know. I am talking like an old old person but a lot of greasy food gives me heartburn lately.
Have you had any?
IT IS PAINFUL. UGH. GROSS.

To combat this dilemma, the mighty foodgawker gave me a hint:

KALE CHIPS!!!!!

 You just need to tear up the kale leaves and drizzle them with olive oil and a bit of salt.

Pop them in the oven of 350 degrees and bake them for about...10 - 13 minutes and

WALA!!!

TRUST ME. It is GOOD. If you google "Kale chips" you will get lots of hits.

It must be in trend now...

You can add any spices. flavor you want to recreate the store-bought chips.

1lbs of kale only cost me $1.50 too!!!





What else could be a substitute for chips that are easy on your stomach and calories, while being yummy and easy on your wallet...

Yes, I am a true advocate of this snack. Although I do love the commercially sold chips...
mmmm I give one vote for salt and vinegar chips.

If you were looking for healthier alternatives for superbowl food, run to the grocery store and buy kale! Quick, it might run out since other 1 million readers of this blog might do the same thing!

just kidding.

Or you can just buy the bagged chips and have heartburn.

If you choose the latter, drinking milk can help reducing the burn.
How nice of me. Happy superbowl day everyone!

Winter time!!! Snow is piling up outside, while my body lipids are piling up on my tummy.

It's winter and it's freezing.

Who wants to go outside and play snowball fight!!!??

NOT ME!

I would like a cup of hot chocolate and a few dozens of cookies and good ol' movies, please.

That basically summed up my winter break...

And the result of this cozy time??

A FEW EXTRA POUNDS thank you very much.

A little story about my relationship with my body...(as some magazines call "you should have healthy relationships with you body!!!" "Love your body" ) As I'm writing this post, even Holly Madison is talking about losing weight on E! show. Very timely.

This summer, after 3 months of eating and drinking my days and nights away, I gained quite a few... well in short, got fattest I've ever been. My legs looked plump and my jeans refused to fit me. ok, great.

Even my own mother introduced me to this special diet.

THE ROYAL DANISH HOSPITAL DIET.

for anyone who's not familiar with this diet, it's diet that you have to follow a specific menu for 2 weeks. It's supposed to help you shed 13lbs after 14 days... It's supposed to fix your metabolism, to make stay in shape for a while...blah blah blah. But you're not supposed to do this diet again for 2 years, and once you give up in the middle of diet, you can't start again for 6months BLAH BLAH BLAH. OK, Here's the menu!

DAY 1:
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar
Lunch: 2 hard-boiled eggs + 400 g spinach + 1 tomato
Dinner: 200 g roast beef + 1 lettuce with oil and lemon juice

DAY 2:
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar
Lunch: 250 g ham + 1 can of natural yogurt
Dinner: 200 g roast beef + 1 lettuce with oil and lemon juice

DAY 3:
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar + 1 slice of toast
Lunch: 2 hard-boiled eggs + 1 slice of ham + 1 lettuce
Dinner: boiled celery + 1 tomato+ 1 fresh fruit (apple, pear, orange)

DAY 4:
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar + 1 slice of toast
Lunch: 200 ml orange juice + 1 can of natural yogurt
Dinner: 1 hard-boiled egg + 1 rubbed out carrot + 250 g cow cheese

DAY 5:
Breakfast: 1 big rubbed out carrot
Lunch: 200 g steamed code with lemon juice + 1 spoon with butter
Dinner: 200 g roast beef + 1 rubbed out celery

DAY 6:
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar + 1 slice of toast
Lunch: 2 hard-boiled eggs + 1 big rubbed out carrot
Dinner: 1/2 chicken + 1 lettuce with oil and lemon juice

DAY 7:
Breakfast: 1 cup of unsweetened tea
Lunch: nothing (drink lot of water, it helps!)
Dinner: 200 g lamb steak + 1 apple 


Anyways, the list goes on for another week. I did this menu for a week.


The  result....I lost good 10lbs!!!! WOW!!! 
And guess what!!


This diet was a total hoax!!!! WOW! Thanks mom! 
Lacking any critical thinking and swallowed by the desperation to gain the acceptance by my jeans, I just did this diet, fighting with hunger and fatigue...


And guess again!!!
My weight is back! yeaaaaay!!!! 


SCREW YOU ROYAL DANISH HOSPITAL DIET!!! 


So people, don't do it. That's all I wanted to say. Thanks.