I am eating Sukeroku sushi ^[1] for lunch now. Sukeroku is a package of roll ^[2] and Inari sushi ^[3]. Originally Sukeroku is a title of Kabuki ^[4]. The story of Sukeroku is the love affair of Mr. Sukeroku and the Oiran ^[5] "A-ge-ma-ki." We call deep-fried tofu which is a main ingredient of inari "A-ge" and we call roll sushi "maki." That is the why the package is called Sukeroku. It’s a kind of Edokko wit. Sushi is good, but I really love pickled ginger, "gari" ^[6]. I can eat gari as my afternoon snack. (I have never eaten it as a snack though; I mean I like it that much.) Why do we call it "gari"? In the Japanese wiki it is said that when you eat gari, it makes the sound "gari gari," or when you cut ginger it makes the sound "gari gari." Well, I suppose this doesn’t make sense. In your country a pig says "oink," and in this country a pig say "boo boo." By the way, it is very easy to make gari ^[7] at home. In winter time, it works to warm up your body.

I am eating sushi and I am looking for some good topics to write, but today is a very poor topic day again. So I will pick "the best selling chocolate slab in Japan." I found this ranking on the Nikkei site ^[8].
1 Meiji Milk chocolate ^[9]
2 Lotte Gana milk chocolate ^[10]
3 Meiji Rich strawberry chocolate ^[11]
4 Meiji Black chocolate ^[12]
5 Meiji White chocolate ^[13]
6 Morinaga Milk chocolate ^[14]
7 Lotte Gana Black chocolate ^[15]
8 Meiji High milk chocolate ^[16]
9 Lotte Crunky chocolate ^[17]
10 Meiji Chokolate effect cacao 86% ^[18]

In Japan, Meiji has an overwhelming share of the chocolate market. I wrote I love 99% ^[19], actually that my favorite slab is Meiji chocolate too. My No.2 is Kiri no ukifune ^[20](a vessel in fog). It has many bubbles inside, so that gives it a very light taste. And No.3 is Chocolife ^[21]. It has 8 different tastes and each package has only 4 pieces of thin chocolates. So we don’t need to worry about eating too much.

Talking about chocolate slabs, I saw many chocolate bars in the U.S but I don’t remember about slabs. Maybe I saw Hershey’s?? I am not sure. On the other hand, there are not so many chocolate bars in Japan; maybe Snickers and Kit Kat? Ha ha, both are U.S products. I don’t know why, maybe Japanese don’t eat so much chocolate all at once. Slabs are easy to break but bars are not easy to break without biting. What do you think? I wrote about Kit Kat in this entrance exam post ^[22]. The BBC picked the same topic in this news ^[23].