Italian Mintia イタリアンミンティア Reviews

For the spring season of 2013 Mintia released two Italian inspired flavors. Being quite the advocate of anything Mintia I purchased both the moment I saw them.
In terms of packaging both feature their respective fruit flavors depicted in the style of stained glass, which I presume is a play on the windows which commonly ordain gothic cathedrals.

Mintia – Italian Lemon
ミンティア – イタリアンレモン

This flavor I find reminiscent of the lemon Ice Breaker equivalent, however where their competitors punch a tasty sour kick these seem to fizzle in comparison. That said, although I find the taste to be a little underwhelming for my liking, they are still not bad at all.
I also am quite fond of the packaging as well as the lemon yellow color of the candy themselves.
Perhaps I just purchased then for the novelty of a new mintia flavor as I typically do but I think they are worth a couple repeat purchases before they are phased out.
A subtle lemony offering from mintia this spring. 3.5/5

If you were interested in what the writing on the packaging says it as follows:

100%レモン果汁入りアロマビーズ + レモンフレーバーチップ配合
Includes a combination of aroma beads containing 100% lemon juice + lemon flavored chips.

The little red box says
シチリア産レモン果汁配合
Blended with Sicilian lemon juice

Mintia – Italian Grape
ミンティア – イタリアングレープ

Grape flavor is not something particularly groundbreaking for mintia and I have already sampled 2 other grape offerings from them. The packaging on these guys however seemed to be a little preachy as to how authentic and fruit filled these are. Honestly I think they might be compensating a little, that said they are not at all bad. The white colored candy are filled with tiny little specks that aparwntly are a mix of grape ‘chips’ and ‘grape juice aroma beads’. Much like the lemon ones I was left wishing for a slightly more pronounced upfront flavor, however in comparison to the regular grape mintia I think these come out on top. For a tasty ‘allegedly’ Cabernet Italian grape experience they get my recommendation! 4/5

Again the translation for the grape flavors packaging:

100%カベルネ果汁入りアロマビーズ + グレプフレーバーチップ配合
Includes a combination of aroma beads containing 100% cabernet grape juice + grape flavored chips.

The little red box on this one says
イタリア産カベルネ果汁配合
Blended with Italian cabernet grape juice

Thank-you Letter From The Principal

Nawwwww after writing my principal a thank-you letter for supporting me last week during my self introduction in front of all the principals in Kobe.

I came to school this morning to find he had written an article expressing how impressed he was with me in the weekly staff newsletter.

All day the other teachers have been telling me how surprised they are I learned to read and write (to be honest I’m still terrible). Feeling fair good about life today (*^^*)

I typed up copy below and provided liberal translations.

◇ 先日ALT紹介と，勤務説明会がありました。
ダニエル先生もしっかりと日本語で自己紹介していましたよ。

At a briefing for work the other day, the ALT’s introduced themselves.
Daniel spoke his self introduction firmly in Japanese.

「私は〜〜台中学校のダニエルといいます。好きな食べ物は餅です。八ツ橋は最高に美味しいで〜〜〜す。」

(Quoting some of my speech)
「I am Daniel from (my schools name) JHS, the food I love is mochi. Yatsuhashi (a specialty from Kyoto) is the most delicious’」

他校の校長先生からも大ウケでした。

It was well received by the other Principals there.

そして翌日，校長先生の机の上に，ダニエル先生からの手紙とチョコレートがおかれていました。とても優しい内容に嬉しくなりました。

Also the next day, on my table in the principals office, Daniel placed a letter and some chocolate (Terry’s chocolate orange in fact *^^*). His kind actions made me very happy.

仲間って良いですね！

He is a very good friend of mine!

Here is a copy of the letter I have him.

My Very First Earthquake 私の最初の地震

So this morning I was awoken at around 5:30am by a queer shaking and an emergency beeping sound coming from my phone. Disorientated from sleep the first thoughts that came to my mind to comprehend what was happening was either I was dreaming, seizuring or this is an earthquake!

Later this morning I discovered that it was in fact quite large at 6.0 magnitude striking at 5:33am near Awaji island in the Seto Inland Sea southwest Kobe, from where I live the quake was felt at around 3.5 magnitude.

The most amusing part of the ordeal was within 2 minutes of waking up, my phone began to echo said earthquake in an hour long constant stream of updates on facebook and texts threads, if there is anything that can wake up the entire Kobe JET community and get them on facebook at 5:30am on a Saturday morning, its a couple seconds of relatively gentle vibrating.

On a more serious note however, Kobe is pretty much renowned for two things when mentioned to those who don’t live in Japan, Kobe beef and Great Hanshin earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1995, and levelled the city of Kobe where I live. Echoing this mornings tremors, its focus was was located 16 km beneath its epicentre on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from Kobe. All Kobe JETs are required to visit The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Museum as part of our orientation shortly after beginning our contracts so we all have an understanding of the seriousness of earthquakes in Japan and the steps taken to reduce their devastation  the following are a couple photos of just how much damage was done to Kobe almost 20 years ago.

Hipster Animal Reward Tokens

Just finished making my new student reward system for 2013 l, this year they are getting hipster animals, why you ask…..

When I asked my new OTE what kind of reward tokens she wanted me to make all she said was ‘I don’t care, whatever makes you happy’.

Now ithought to myself yano what always makes me happy kitsune, tako, pugs and mother fracking grumpy cat! (*^◯^*)

What Time Is It? Adventure Time!

I have noticed these air temperature graphs present in every school and government building I’ve been inside in Kobe, I can’t help but only see Fin the Human from Adventure Time in them every day whenever I glance one in the 職員室 (Staff Room).

Right????

Jinjiidou 人事異動: The Great Teacher Shuffle

Every 12 months in all public organizations in Japan a grand mass personnel swap occurs which called Jinjiidou 人事異動 (annual staff reassignment).
As most JET participants will find themselves working at a public school of some description this change tends to affect us quite considerably.

For me personally this change has completely flipped my day to day life on its head, all 3 of my 校長先生 (principals) at my schools have been switched in the coming year. Most teachers are switching the year level they teach and most importantly, my l inexperienced and largely incompetent chief OTE has been replaced with a woman who is her polar opposite!
Regardless I have high hopes for the future.