food-filled tuesday. what could be better?

i had quite a fun day yesterday! totally made up for the previous day, during which i was a sloth who didn't get a damn thing accomplished. i'd slept in with the bean till 10, and we didn't even make it out of jammies till, oh, 5pm. and that was only because i was afraid of the hub coming home from work to see us. heh.

i actually managed to take a shower and get ready for the day (clean underwear and stuff! yay!) before the hub left for work. even the bean managed to get a nice, clean new outfit on (complete with her "tuesday" socks) at a decent hour. i scurried around, getting laundry folded, put away, and starting more loads, and before i knew it, it was 12:25 and time to pick up the kid from school.

we went to corner bakery for lunch. mmm. she had the pesto cavatappi, which looked really yummy, and i went with the bavarian sandwich. on pretzel bread. delish.

the kid wanted to head out to rite aid to find, of all things, shoes that some of the girls at her school were sporting. i thought this was weird, but hey, she was jazzed over $5 shoes. okay! i needed to pick up a few toiletries anyway, so we browsed the personal care section first.

and, as usual, even at rite aid, hilarity ensued. i doubled over in schoolgirl giggles when i found my least-favorite words on some of the products, which the kid was only too happy to snap with her phone:

yes, i am a 10-year-old boy. i think i've managed to establish that fact in many a post. shut up.

and we even found the shoes she wanted. they reminded me a lot of tom's shoes, only less altruistic.
after we dropped the kid off for her tutoring session, i decided to make the trip down to marukai - a really fun japanese supermarket. i'd found a recipe for miso-glazed salmon and i wanted to try it out, but i couldn't find any miso in any of my local stores, so i decided it'd be fun to go and browse the aisles to find snacks and other stuff.

i paid my $10 for store membership (good for a year, tyvm), and then the first thing i stumbled upon was this lovely shrine to my most favorite japanese snack EVER:

why, hello, pocky. how YOU doin'? *wink*

i was dazzled by the sheer volume and number of varieties displayed on this endcap, but i remembered the shelf-full of pocky i still have at home, so i settled for snapping the picture. i also enjoyed seeing hello kitty on everything from rice crackers to rice seasoning. sheesh. when i was little, the only place you could find hello kitty was in gift shops, and even those were few and far between. and now, she's EVERYWHERE. not that i'm complaining. i strolled down almost all of the aisles in search of my miso, and when i finally found it, i was absolutely flummoxed (you like that? i'm so going to get this blog to qualify for a level above "junior high", even if it kills me) at the number of choices i had. i had no idea which one to get, so i just shut my eyes, stuck my hand out, and put the first one i touched into my cart. i hope it's what i need for the salmon.

and when i got to the register, i tried to tell the cashier that i didn't want the hello kitty rice seasoning after all. but she either didn't hear me, ignored me, or didn't understand what i'd said. and she was one of MY peeps (i could tell from the accent)! hmph. i guess we'll be having some hello kitty rice with that miso-glazed salmon.
i waited till i got home to take pictures of the most fun items i scooped up - mostly because i was too embarrassed to do it in the store. there were a lot of people shopping at the time and i'd already gotten a couple of weird glances after the pocky portrait.

i made one more stop - at babies r'us. i had two gift cards burning a hole in my pocket and the bean needed a few things. well, i wanted them for her. she's not exactly in *need* of a damn thing. while i shopped, she fell asleep in the sling. and the whole time, all i could think about was the bags of snacks i had waiting for me in the car. this led to a couple of bonehead moves:

• after everything had been rung up, i found only one of the gift cards in my wallet. and, of course, it was the one with the lesser value on it.
• i was dying of thirst, so i picked up a bottle of water to drink on the way home. and then promptly loaded the bag (with the water inside) in the trunk.

haha! oops. oh, well. i got home, unloaded my treasures, got the bean all settled, and started snapping.

sorry for the blurry picture. i'd read about these chocolate treats while catching up on my favorite candy blog the other day, so i made sure to keep my eye out for them. and i couldn't resist a bag of yummy hello kitty marshmallows with strawberry stuff in the middle.

a package of miso-flavored ramen (i've never had any other than the americanized version that you can get 10 for $1), and a fun assortment of snacks. those are "pudding" flavored pretz. i can't wait to try them.

and, the other reason i wanted to hit up marukai - as i mentioned earlier in the week, i was dying to get my hands on some mochi (and not the ice cream-filled kind from trader joe's). so i was pee-my-pants-excited to turn a corner and find these lovelies sitting on a shelf, just waiting for me:

i'd first heard of fugetsu-do from the monkey, and then read up on it on yelp, so i was even more excited to see that these treats were straight from that historic confectionery store in little tokyo. i was a little skeptical as to their quality - even i know these wouldn't be as good as getting them fresh from the shop - but i scooped them up anyway. these are (from the top) fruit-flavored, peanut butter, and chocolate - all the flavors people raved about in that yelp review.

so after i was all done taking pictures, i sat down and took my very first bite of non-ice cream-mochi.

and fell in love.

the peanut butter is SPLENDID. they use crunchy peanut butter for the filling, so there's a nice surprise inside. oh, yum. these alone are worth the $10 annual membership fee.

i haven't tried the fruit ones yet, but they look fun. there better not be any chunks of fruit in there.

and the chocolate is...a'ight. i wanted to like it more, but i'm not 100% sold.

maybe i better give it another shot. ;)