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Look at this beast.  This is Japanese fast food chain Lotteria’s special limited time only destroyer of arteries, the aptly-named Tower Cheeseburger.  Finally got around to conquering it over the weekend.  I don’t know if I should be proud or ashamed of that.  Probably a little of both.

I first heard about this behemoth last month from Gigazine, who compared it to KFC USA’s Double Down sandwich in terms of terribleforyouness.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) until the beginning of June the Tower Cheeseburger wasn’t available at the Lotteria near my house and I never got around to trying it anywhere else in Tokyo.  But yeah, Blanchard and I hit up Lotteria yesterday for lunch and each got the Tower Cheeseburger plus fries and a drink.  It was a disgusting and delicious experience.

Obviously, the thing is massive.  It’s kind of like eating an entire meatloaf only greasier and cheesier.  It comes wrapped in paper just like a normal cheeseburger, but it’s pretty tough to pick up and actually fit into your mouth like a normal burger.  Brian somehow managed to do so in record time, but I had to get a fork to finish the thing off bit by bit.  Surprisingly, the taste is pretty good overall once you get over the fact that you’re destroying yourself.  The cheese was really good, and the meat patties seemed like pretty good quality , although with that much cheese and meat the flimsy bun and skimpy condiments (only on the buns) make it a little boring to eat.

I hadn’t been to a Lotteria for a long time since their normal burgers are pretty small and their prices seem more expensive than McDonald’s.  But after this experience I’m likely to hit up Lotteria again in the next few months before I leave, although definitely not for a 10×10 ever again.

For the most part I really don’t care about politics, including Japanese politics. But it looks like Japan’s first ever alien Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, is resigning from his post, so I will show some interest momentarily and write a blog post that really isn’t about politics at all.  But yeah Hatoyama is resigning over the Futenma “fiasco” that doesn’t really seem to be the disaster that all the media seems to be making it out to be.  Except for maybe a group of 100 old people down in Okinawa who seem to be protesting every (rare) time I turn on Japanese news.

Because of his “failure” to fulfill his promise and move the US military base out of Okinawa, Hatoyama is doing the “responsible” thing and resigning.  You have to say those things in quotes with the Dr. Evil voice and gestures because otherwise it might sound like you believe this BS.  Rather than actually taking responsibility for what really isn’t a huge failure, Hatoyama’s decided to throw in the towel after 8 months in office, which unfortunately has been around the standard tenure for a prime minister in post-Koizumi Japan.  This is the same Japanese mentality behind the big public apology press conferences and subsequent resignations from CEOs and other company leaders when they don’t actually want to deal with a problem.  But I’m not going to go much into that here.

No, instead here is a stupid list of things.  Yes, Japan has had 4 prime ministers quit in less than 4 years which is pretty sad when you consider that in that time…

• I’ve had fewer cell phones
• I’ve lived in fewer apartments
• Fewer Harry Potter movies have been released
• There have been fewer generations of the iPhone released
• All of the current-gen video game consoles came out
• McDonald’s Japan’s Mega fad came and went
• 4 Kamen Rider series have ended (Hey!  Same number!)

So prime ministers here are rotating about as often as the childrens superhero programs.  Interesting.  So much for political stability.  I think I’m more surprised that he convinced big boss Ozawa to resign too.