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Since I knew that people would ask me about the food in Germany, I decided to take a few snapshots of the food I ate during my week in Essen, Germany.  I’m sure that this isn’t considered gourmet, but these are a few things that I ate during the week.

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As you have probably noticed, I haven’t been posting about surfing for the last week and a half.  That’s because I was attending an international linguistics conference.  The name of the conference was AILA 2008.

It was a quite large conference that was held in Essen, Germany from August 24th - 29th.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Germany, here’s a handy map:

The closest international airports are Frankfurt and Dosseldorf.  (I actually flew from Nagoya to Frankfurt and then took a 45-minute or so flight from Frankfurt to Dosseldorf).

On the Victoria Day weekend, I toured the HMCS Ottawa. She is a Canadian frigate based in Esquimalt, British Columbia. She is now touring around Asia and the South Pacific on a 6-month voyage. She is over 130 meters long and the top speed is around 50 km/h (30 knots). She carries a crew of 225 people - 205 are men and 20 are women. Here is a picture of her at sea. (Obviously, I did not take this picture).

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Did you see this picture in the news this week?

A boy in Moriyama found this two-headed turtle in the playground at his school. The turtle’s name is Treasure - Takara in Japanese. Researchers say that this　wasn’t caused by pollution. I’m not sure what to think about this. What do you think - is this natural or unnatural?

Usually news about the environment is pessimistic at best. I was happy to see a report that the humpback whales are doing well in the North Pacific. In 1966, the population was estimated to be less than 1,500. A large study conducted by 400 researchers between 2004 and 2006 found that the population now numbers around 20,000. About half of these whales migrate between Alaska and Hawaii, while the over half migrate from Russia to Japan and the Philippines. The findings also suggest that there must be a third migration pattern that hasn’t been identified yet.

To read more about the study and to see some beautiful photos, visit here.

Tired of wimpy burgers that aren’t satisfying??

Asyl, a restaurant near Akihabara station sells the 20 cm. tall burger pictured below.  The “Aki Burger” sells for a mere 1890 yen.  To my untrained eyes, it looks like two burgers stacked on top of each other. 

For directions to the restaurant, visit the restaurant’s website here.

The other day I saw this picture and didn’t believe that this was a real photograph. I figured that someone had been playing with Photoshop.

But this is a real photo. Zzyzx Road is a small road in California. Here’s a link to the wikipedia entry for Zzyzx, California.

This American man is selling or trading his beard.

It comes in this handy jar…

For more details, follow this link Sorry, the link has died. I wonder if he found a buyer!

Have you heard the words gorno or lolcat? How about the terms exploding arm or colony collapse disease?

New words and phrases are coined every year. Many of them become widely used, and others are quickly forgotten.

Click here to read more about last year’s buzzwords.