The Buhner.com Blog

Maybe it was the interview.

I’m not sure, but for whatever reason, Tara’s second order from J-List disappeared. All the processes were gone through, and she got her notification that the order was places, and that she’s be receiving a confirmation email within 24 hours. 24 hours passes, and no email. Tara contacts J-List, which tell her that it’s odd that she never received a confirmation email. They tell her to order again.

Herein lies the problem.

J-List keeps a revolving stock of their products. Everything that they keep in inventory is in a “limited quantity”, which is something I’ve found to be a plus and a minus for their site. It’s relatively smart, since they constantly bring in new items without having to have a massive inventory or have to have people scrolling through hundreds of items to see what’s available. It’s not as smart, however, when you run out of a product that people have a demand for, and you don’t know when you can get it back in.

Tara ordered a lot of stuff from J-List this particular time; not enough to even put into memory, so replicating the order would have been tough enough as it stands. Add onto that the fact that a decent percentage of items that Tara did know she ordered aren’t on the site anymore, and are therefore not available. It was bad enough waiting for a package that had to come over from Japan and go though cutoms; add onto that waiting for J-List to determine when (and if) they were going to restock the products we wanted, and you start to get into a serious wait for what you’re looking for. That’s just bad business.

It’s becoming more evident that Peter Payne did study too much Japanese (as he said in his interview) when he went to Japan, and not enough business. Most companies that sell products (especially online) stop selling the product when their stock gets very low, but not zero. This assures that in a worst case senerio things can be replaced (if broken or lost), and more importantly, will keep customers happy, because the product that they ordered will be received. J-List, instead of trying to make a bad situation better, took an “oh well” approach, and never took any action to correct it.

Well, needless to say, Tara’s had it with J-List, and I can’t say I’ll recommend them again. If you want Japanese porn, they seem to be the place to go (since Peter seems to take a great interest in it), but outside of that, it’s a crapshoot. Damn shame, is what it is.

Well, my car is in serious trouble, and it’s gotten to the point where I don’t feel comfortable driving it anywhere (even the Blazer didn’t get to that point). I actually went down to the place that’s handling the transmission repair today (it was supposedly fixed yesterday, but no one told the car that) and told them about the problems that are currently there. The people, who swore up and down that their work would be covered and they’d fix any problem, proceded to tell me that since I’ve “got the new transmission”, I should “take the opportunity to sell it or trade it in now, before it ends up costing any more.” Point taken, guys, but the idea is to make the car dealership think that the vehicle is worth anything, and giving them a car that may lock up mysteriously driving down the road probably isn’t going to get me top dollar. They referred to all the problems the car currently has (some of which I already heard), but the point remains that before the transmission went down the tubes, it ran well. I just want it back to the point where it was before the transmission died. If they can’t give me that, that’s their problem, and has to do with their work, regardless of other problems the car may have. The problems were there before, and the car was “fine”. Now I can’t drive it.

Also (yeah, I update this late), it appears the Lakers lost tonight, and are out of the playoffs. I really don’t like pro basketball anymore (I was never really a big fan), but I do enjoy seeing teams like the Lakers lose, especially since they’re a major team (like an LA or New York) that just begs for bandwagon jumpers. It’s one of those things that made me dislike being a Yankee fan. Once the Yankees started winning, every New Yorker jumped off the Mets bandwagon and suddely became a Yankee fan, despite the fact they couldn’t name four players on the team. If you want my NBA pick though, I guess I pull for San Antonio, for two reasons. One: they have on their roster Craig “Speedy” Claxton, the only first round NBA choice out of my beloved Hofstra University. Speedy gets playing time too. But the main reason is the fact that it’s San Antonio. It just says something about the NBA where their world champion can be from a city that has no other major sports franchise. San Antonio! Home of the NBA World Champions, and AA Minor League Baseball!

Brand spanking new at Buhner.com is our first interview (of many). I had put off interviews for a while, because I wanted to establish the site more before I started asking people to take time out of their schedules to answer stupid questions that I threw at them. But, then I decided to just do it anyway. Posted right now is interview #1, with J-List’s Peter Payne. If you have ideas for future interviews, or somehow think that you’re interesting enough to be interviewed yourself, email me at tom@buhner.com.

Got a present waiting for me on the front step when I got home today. Yes, dear readers, my care package from J-List arrived. I’d link it, but it’s linked twice below, so figure it out. It was a box full of Japanese snacks; stuff that you’d only find in Japan. Tara picked them out for me as a “surprise”, but she couldn’t keep the secret that she bought stuff a secret for long. She did keep what she bought a secret though, until now. A quick rundown:

Every Burger - These are small hamburger-looking cookies, which consist of a sugar cookie-like bun (complete with actual sesame seeds) and a chocolate filling made to look like a hamburger. Very tasty, and in the true Japanese style, “cute food”.

Hi-Chew (Green Apple) - Hi-Chew is a taffy-like candy which comes in several flavors. Tara knows my love of green apple flavor (actually, sour apple), and picked this up. Surprisingly, not only did this have a nice tart flavor (many American Green Apple candies tend to be very sweet), but this did not stick to my teeth in the slightest. As you chewed, you’d think that it would, but absolutely not. Why can’t they do this with American taffy?

Sake Candy - I didn’t like sake the first time I tried it, but this would be one of those things that is truly Japanese, so Tara picked it up anyway. The candy is very similar to the type of ribbon candy that you’d get at Christmastime (the kind that your grandma sticks in a bowl and it all sticks together), and has an unusual flavor that isn’t bad… it’s unusual. It may taste like sake, I really don’t remember. I wouldn’t say it’s delicious, but it’s interesting.

Black Black Gum - This stuff seems to have a following outside of Japan, but it’s still relatively unheard of. Black Black gum has a strong mint flavor (think Altoids) and is loaded with caffine. The gum is black (well, gray), and according to the label, has “hi-technical excellent taste and flavor.” Word.

Pocky (Choco Banana) - There’s about 18 million kinds of Pocky. Pocky is a non-salted pretzel-like thing which is dipped in a coating 3/4 of the way, which gives the Pocky whatever flavor it has. The chocolate banana flavor here is very good, and the part that isn’t dipped allows you to hold it, as to not get the coating on your fingers. Pretty smart. Not overly sweet, which makes it even better.

Pretz (Ebi Shio) - At the Glico factory, they make these saltless pretzel sticks and send them in two different directions. Half go to the Pocky side, where they become something sweet. The other half go to the Pretz side, where they become something salty. To call these “pretzel” snacks (in the case of both the Pocky and Pretz) isn’t overly accurate, at least in the way we think of pretzels. They are more of a breadstick, although the flavor of pretzel is still there. They are very tender, and break easily (as my Pretz didn’t do too well in the plane/boat/train/UPS truck ride over from Japan). “Ebi Shio” literally means “shrimp salt”, which would explain the little shrimp looking at me on the box. I guess when you’re surrounded by water, seafood tends to influence your snack treats. I found these to be really good, as most anything seafood related snack-wise tends to taste like Old Bay Seasoning here, and these actually tasted like a seafood treat. Tara wasn’t crazy about these.

Mill Make (Peach) - Unlike most other products that you can pick up in Japan, this package had absolutely NO English on it, outside of “OK!!” on the front. Apparently, it must be good. What you find inside the package is five smaller packets, which contain a substance that looks closest to peach colored ice cream sprinkles. They smelled very peachy, and are used by kids (and I’m sure a few adults) to flavor their milk. It comes in more flavors, but this was pretty good; not overwhelming, and didn’t make me sick like Strawberry Quik used to. Plus, a lot easy to carry around and less messy.

Watering Kiss Mint Gum (Apple Mint Green) - Watering Kiss Mint reminds me a lot of Trident, although the pieces are a little bit bigger, and last a little longer. It comes in a flip top open box, and has a very interesting flavor; while American gum seems content with just “mint”, the Watering Kiss Mint gum flavors their mint with Apple (in this case), Peach, and Lemon (along with “clear). The flavor allows for a miny flavor (and fresh breath) while not making you taste mint for too long, while mixing it nicely with the fruit flavor. I swear, American companies can’t “borrow” this idea?

Chocolate Gummi Sushi - Leave it to Japan to take something like sushi and make candy out of it (again, something you’d think America would jump on, with their desire to gummi-ize “weird” food.) The gummi sushi is pretty interesting, with the gummi part being the “fish” part of the sushi (such as roe or a piece of shrimp), with the “rice” it sits on being a marshmallow with a bit of chocolate filling on the inside. Nothing overly special about the flavor, but pretty cool.

Pucca (Chocolate) - I list these as “chocolate”, although I haven’t seen any other type. These are goldfish-shaped crackers (actually, pretzels again) which are filled with chocolate. They look like something you could eat way too many of at one setting. Very tasty, and I’m sure full of calories; they’re like Goldfish crackers gone bad (not rotten, but evil).

Overall, very cool stuff, and all very tasty (although the sake candy I’m still trying to get used to.) I’m impressed most, I think, with the packaging that many of these things come in. Most everything I received came in a box, and all the contents were individually wrapped, wither by the piece, or in packs (like the Pocky and Pretz), to retain freshness. All very cool. I highly recommend checking out J-List (again, I shill) just to try out something different. J-List’s snack selection is always changing (depending what they keep in stock, because they don’t have warehouses full of the stuff), so things you find on there one day you might not find the next. As it stands, I can’t find the Mill Make on the site, but I’m sure it’ll be on there in the future.

As for articles, I’ve got two in the works, and an interview! More later, but now, I eat.

Words words words, as Dave Matthews says in “Pay For What You Get”. I spit out quite a few of them in my latest article, talking about my recent trip to a neighboring middle school to take the Suffolk County Police Exam. Yeah, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done an update, but I’m working on a few things at once. The Chinese Buffet article is still being worked on (it may be up Friday night or Saturday, so I can get one more taste of the C-Buff, or it may go later so I can get some photos to go along with the article), so that got pushed to the back burner. I scored an interview with Peter Payne, who runs J-List, mentioned below. That’ll be up soon, as I look for a few more good questions. Finally, what was going to be a simple update turned into Buhner.com Takes The Police Test. Hopefully, my seemingly simple experience makes for an enjoyable read, and I can come up with a few more articles in the near future. Until then, hang in there.