Everything for 100 yen

Have you ever visited the so called "1 pound" shop in England?
If you did, you surely liked it, but most of the stuff there seemed to be pretty useless. At least that is what I thought about it.

Japan has something very similar but also much different in the same time - 100 yen (hyaku-yen) shops, while right now, 100 yen is worth, more or less, 1$.

The best thing about "100 yen" shops, is that you can buy there EVERYTHING!
Obviously, the quality of products is not the finest but it does not really matter if you can buy those things for such a low price.

During my recent visit to 100 yen shop, Daniel San got me a book (for kids) to practice katakana writing - one of the japanese alphabets. I used to hate such excercise books when I was a 7 year old little girl but now it`s so much fun!


"100 yen" shop shown in the above pictures is located in Nagoya,
between Irinaka and Yagoto metro stations.

A very long flight

On Friday morning, I left home and took a bus to the Warsaw airport and that is where I started my second trip to Japan. I was going to take 3 flights:
Warsaw-Paris, Paris-Narita(Tokyo) and Narita-Chubu(Nagoya).

Firstly, at the check-in, it turned out that I can not receive the boarding pass for the last flight so it made me a bit upset. I was not sure how confusing the Tokyo airport might turn out be. Anyway, after waiting a while I got on the plane that took me to the city of lights. As it was daytime, there were not many lights on but that was not the point, right?
I was looking forward to get to the terminal E of CDG airport coz it is a great place to take some cool pics. Even though the light, due to the weather was not perfect, I have managed to take few cool shots.

I was aware that I will spend over 12 next hours sitting on the plane so I kept on walking around the terminal wherever it was possible. What surprised me the most, was the row of very comfy chairs with a perfect view for watching planes taking off. And even better thing, was that no other passenger seemed to have noticed the existence of such relaxing place.

But that was not the end of the whole surprise... When I looked a bit down, I noticed another row of such chairs, this time black ones.
It seems that even airport terminals might have some worth visiting spots!

Proud of my great discovery I got on the JAL plane with a full smile.
Inside this giant machine, the person sitting next to me turned out to be a very friendly Japanese man coming back from his business trip. He told me that I was the first Polish person he ever met and kept on asking me questions about the country and for my reasons of going to Japan. At the end of the flight he asked if he can take a picture of me, so I agreed but maybe it was not the best idea coz nobody can resemble themselves in the picture after such a long flight hehe
Meanwhile, the flight attendant turned out to be Spanish and told me that the truth is, that he does not speak Japanese. He knows just the basics, so if any Japanese passenger asked him any question, he would be completely lost!

After landing at Narita airport, I had to pick up my luggage and do another check-in at the domestic flights. In the airport shop, I bought a box of soy sauce flavored Kit-Kat, that is a limited edition distributed just in Tokyo. Also, in the same shop, Japanese people who just got back from their journeys, were filling their stomachs with ramen that they probably missed a lot.
I arrived at Nagoya airport with a slight delay just before the sunset, but Daniel San was waiting for me very patiently.

One... two... three days in Poznan!

One February weekend, when the snow was about to start melting on the streets, I went to visit my cousins - Ela and Ula - in Poznan.

Not many things have changed since we've seen each other during Christmas but entirely new were 2 board games that Ela bought few days before I got there. The 1st one - Power Grid - was the game which I already knew from the board games night in Porto and which I liked and kept on talking about so much that Ela didn't hesitate while ordering it. As Ela's set contained 4 different boards/maps, we've tried them all - Benelux, USA, Germany and Central Europe. I'm still looking forward to play on different maps that were published, such as Iberian Peninsula, Brazil, Nordic Countries or Italy.

Meanwhile, we also had to eat something so we did shopping in a nearby shop where we found something that totally surprised me - pasteis de nata - my favourite portuguese pastry!

The process of baking them is extremely simple (actually the Polish translation on the box says that the proper temperature is 275*C, while in English, German and Portuguese it says 250*C haha), the price is similar to those in Portuguese bakeries and what is the most important, they are as tasty as they should be!

If you were following my blog carefully during the last year, you should already know where the best Pasteis de Nata are being served - in Belem, close to Lisbon.

The 2nd board game was The Fury of Dracula - 2 players were vampire hunters trying to catch the 3rd player - Dracula, who was hiding and running away from them around Europe. At first the rules were very confusing for me. After Ela and Ula were Draculas in each game, it was my turn and we started kidding that probably I will ask them where should I hide my Dracula from them. It turned out that I was much better as the Dracula than I expected and I'm looking forward to play it again, even though I didn't like the game at the beginning.

How to make it YZY not ZYZ?

Does it sometimes happen to you that somehow instead of "yzyzyz", which you are typing,
the thing that is coming out is opposite - "zyzyzy"? And that's also one of those times, when you're getting totally mad, while you are trying to ":)" you aren't able to do so coz you get this "Ł=" .

Here is the cure (which is exactly the same as the source) for this terrible disease:
press CTRL +SHIFT once in the same time

Yzy, isn't it? ;)

P.S. I'm sure that this tip is useful for the users of Windows XP in Polish. No idea about the rest ;)

Fat Thursday

If I were to choose the sweetest Polish tradition, it would be today's holiday - the Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek). In Christian tradition, the Fat Thursday is the last chance to eat as much as possible before the 40day lent followed by Easter holidays. On the last Thursday of Carnival, each Pole has to eat at least one pączek, which is a kind of a donut with random fillings. The most classical one has rose jelly filling inside and is being covered with sweet glaze sprinkled with pieces of dried orange.
This time I had 2 pączki - regular one with jelly rose filling and the other one with advocat and powdered sugar on the top.

1 pączek (pon-check)

2 pączki (ponch-ki)

The best place to try pączki in Warsaw is "Cukiernia Pawłowicz " at 13 Chmielna street, where they serve them fresh and still hot!
Can you imagine something better than such a sweet donut covered in a paper bag warming up your hands and mouth when it's snowing all around you? I don't think so!