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While I was mostly lounging around for the past week, I did get to catch up on a lot of TV. One of the shows I've cleared from my DVR is the new one from Delia Smith on BBC Two.

Hi everyone. I am alive and getting better. I actually had a tonsillectomy (hi Yoko I got it done finally); this winter I had two very bad bouts with tonsillitis and thought those things best be gone. At the moment I am feeling quite blah (probably the meds), and somehow quite depressed for some reason I can't put a finger on. I'm not supposed to be doing anything too stressful for a while, and surfing the internets right now really gets me down even more - can't explain that either.

I love my Macs in a way that is hard to explain, unless you're like me and have been using Macs since the '80s. Well, my trusty 12 inch Powerbook suddenly decided to die. Thank god for backups. So the last 36 hours or so have been spent transferring, backing up and other things to a brand new Macbook Pro. It's a bittersweet feeling; while a new Mac is always nice, that little Powerbook was a true workhorse, a perfect fit for me in so many ways. I'd resisted upgrading it for a while, but all good Macs must go to heaven some time.

At the same time that the Powerbook decided to die, it was decided that I would be going through with some elective surgery that I needed to get but was holding off on too. So, updates here and on Just Bento will be a bit slower. I have some things already written up which I hope will be postable by me or a helpful elf, but replying to comments and things will have to wait.

I didn't know I had so much synergy with my Powerbook! I hope I can revive her as a media server or something, and I hope I can revive my body parts too.

I was just opening a new pack of umeboshi (pickled plums) today, when I noticed this warning on the lid in Japanese:

WARNING: Umeboshi have seeds, and sometimes the seeds can be pointed.
So please be careful.

Here's the label, with two pointy seeds.

(Edit: I could understand the umeboshi warning if it was in English (or language of the country in which the pack was being sold), since people may be unfamiliar with umeboshi. But this was a pack imported from Japan, with Japanese writing, so they are warning Japanese people, who are, or should be, familiar with umeboshi and their pointy seeds. Ume are related to apricots, so maybe apricots should have pointy-seed labels too.)

WTF? So...has it come to this now? We have to have warning labels on natural foods?

I can understand warning labels on manufactured products, say a pesto sauce, to warn about the existence of finely ground nuts. A small percentage of the population is very allergic to nuts.

But, surely the nut-allergic shopper knows to stay away from whole peanuts for example. Or will we have to have labels on those too? "Warning: This bag contains peanuts." ....

What about warning labels on bags of beans? "Warning: This bag contains beans, which may cause flatulence and socially awkward situations." Meat? "Warning: This pack contains meat, which comes from an animal. Vegetarians are known to have an aversion to meat." A bunch of bananas? "Warning: Bananas have slippery skins. If dropped on the ground, they may cause an accident, or a horde of circus clowns to show up."

Is this labelling gone too far? (Japan is not as litigious as the U.S. for example, but it's slowly getting there.) Are there any other nanny-state labels you've seen?

The three finalists of the BBC's MasterChef 2008 wait anxiously for the winner to be proclaimed...

Here are the results of the latest poll, which asked the question: Should there be more restaurant authenticity verifiers? The poll results with comments and nifty graphics are here.

• Yes, I want to know if the food I'm eating is authentic. = 43% (80 votes)
• No, it's a bad idea - 49% (91 votes)
• Other - 6% (12 votes)
• Don't know - 2% (3 votes)

Look what came in the mail today!

As I wrote about last year, Valentine's Day in Japan is fraught with social stress. Somehow, the chocolate manufacturers have managed to convince the whole society that a girl or woman can't just give chocolates to the ones they love. (And it's only the women who give chocolates in Japan on the 14th, not men, unlike other countries.) She must also give giri choco, or 'obligation chocolates', to people she 'owes'; bosses, teachers, and fathers-in-law.

Now you can see this kind of social giving in miniature! Re-ment, the maker of amazingly detailed diecast miniatures which I've also written about before, has this set of two types of chocolates: _Honmei or giri?!_ (Your real target, or obligation?!) The caption says this:

Just like it's a good idea to take inventory of your pantry sometimes, I find it useful to take a look back at my sites occasionally and take stock of what I'm doing.

Here's a new poll to chew over this Monday. The Japanese government has been ruffling some feathers in the restaurant world with their attempts to set up a program to certify the authenticity of 'Japanese' restaurants around the world (read about it here). Should more countries start such schemes, government-sponsored or not? Should a Spanish group be going around the world verifying if a paella is properly Spanish? Should the Germans inspect the quality of wurst? Or, what about the Americans - should they go around the world inspecting bagels? (You can get some mighty unusual bagels in Japan for instance, I can tell you.)

What do you think? Have your say!

• Go to the poll!