The 2-Belo wrote:
> CL totally sneezed all over fj.life.in-japan with a withering cloud of snot:
> 
>> The 2-Belo wrote:
>>
>>> 1) I want to figure out how I can get my hands on a wild bird feeder and some
>>> seed. No one feeds the birds around here, despite there being an ample supply of
>>> sparrows, finches, warblers, etc. Why not? The people at the pet store looked at
>>> me like I was bug-buggering insane. All the bird seed was for exotic pets such
>>> as cockatoos. What gives?
>> Do you have any DIY stores down where you are?  Cainz Home and Kommeri 
>> around Kanto have things like that.  I think there is also a <something> 
>> Max super hardware type of store, too.
> 
> I looked at Fujiya Home Center and Valor, but they had nothing like that, only
> items related to indoor pets, and chickens. As John W said further down in the
> thread, I should shut up and make my own.

I was Googling something else and decided that, as long as I was there, 
to try 「バード・フィーダー」 ... which made the search engine chug 
along and produce no hits in the time it took me to get up, take a 
whizz, get a fresh cup of tea, and sit back down.  So I tried "bird 
feeder AND Japan" and the first hit is a site from Ace Hardware which is 
set up to handle Japan business.

https://www.diyna.com/wj/ace-usa/procs/subcatdisp.php?subcat=50715

And _this_ English site about things Wa-ful:

http://www.seihin-world.com/s/2005/07/12_0157.php

I was hoping to find a Japanese language link that would tell me the 
proper kana or kanji for the term, but the first three pages of hits are 
all in English and about 95% are E-bay sellers or amazon.com, the latter 
of which may do something if you start out at amazon.com and try to find 
the same item at amazon.jp.  It's worked for books and some other stuff 
maybe it will work for bird feeders, too.

>>> 2) WHERE CAN I FIND SOME DECENT SWISS CHEESE IN THIS LOUSY GODDAMNED COUNTRY*
>> Carrefour.  Unless you're willing to buy a Costco membership.  
> 
> I had a Costco membership, but the nearest Costco is in Amagasaki, which is damn
> near three hours away. I couldn't justify paying Y4500 for a year's membership
> if I can only go once a quarter. I shall have to wait until they get around to
> building one in Chubu.

People I know from Osaka-fu always describe Amagasaki as the rectum of 
the known universe, which is probably why the land and rents are so 
cheap and attract lots of foreign capitalized companies.

>> Cheese is 
>> another thing Chinese demand has seriously f*cked up for the rest of the 
>> world.  We were looking into adding cheese importing from some high cost 
>> centers in the EU as well as a lot of the super cheap stuff from some of 
>> the old Warsaw Pact countries to go with our other businesses.  It seems 
>> as though every place we have gone in Eastern Europe, we get outbid by 
>> the Chinese who buy everything the factories can make on multi-year 
>> contracts.  Wholesale prices for dairy product exports are 'way up all 
>> over the world and it is all heading for China.
> 
> They're using it to build the top-secret anti-Taiwan CHEESE WEAPON!!!!!11

That was the Cheddar Hypersonic Accelerator; one designed by the 
Canadian engineer who was assassinated, right?  Don't know why the 
Chinese would go to all of that trouble when they could just ship a 
couple of container loads of frozen gyoza and beef tongue over instead. 
  They don't have to buy in and can use ingredients they already have.

-- 
CL