You probably made mud balls when you were a kid. I did and it was fun to make it smoother and harder. But did you know you can make it shiny? I was surprised to read this site. Look! It’s so shiny ^[1]. Actually it seems a real hobby in Japan and there is the "Association of Nippon Doroｰdango Science" ^[2] (Doro-dango is mud ball in Japanese). Here ^[3] is the site talking about shiny mubball in English. This site ^[4] has instructions  for"how to make shiny mudball". Wow don’t you think you want to try? I want. I will :-)

Yesterday I read an interesting article ^[5]. The products having good sales have common keyword. It’s "Men’s". For example, Kanebo foods ^[6] released a gum "men flavor" ^[7] (otoko kaoru). After eating the gum, your body smell like a rose, they said. It flied out of stores and currently they are back-ordered.  "The Handsome Tofu" (Otokomae Dofu) was the big topic because of their success. They are just Tofu maker, but they have very unique pop website ^[8] and named a very tough manish name to each tofu. This is "handsome tofe" ^[9], this is "Blown by the wind, tofu guy Johnny" tofu ^[10].  This summer, the authentic umbrella maker Miyatake ^[11] released guy’s parasol "Men’s Sara cool" ^[12]. They said Sara cool sold more than women’s parasol this year. Thinking of "men’s", I think Glico men’s pocky ^[13] is the first product having copy "men’s".

Hmm interesting, I wonder "men’s" sound "functionable", "real", "serious" to the people. I tried only that gum, did my body smell nice? No I didn’t feel like that.