Mos Burger, Wind Tunnels and Waffle Scented Smoke

Yesterday I had a Mos Burger for the first time ever. For those of you who don't know, Mos Burger is a Japanese fast food chain that sells the Japanese version of a hamburger. Translation: the buns are made of rice! How crazy is that! My particular burger was a kinpira burger, so its patty was made of burdock root - which is a vegetable kind of similar to a sweet potato - and its buns were made of slightly toasted rice. All together it was delicious!



The burgers are actually pretty small, so even though the buns are made of rice, it's not as bad as it sounds! Unlike America, Japan has manageable portions.

Yesterday, I also went on a field trip with the rest of the AKP group to the Kyoto Disaster Prevention Center, which was actually a lot more fun than it sounds, believe it or not. They had simulation rooms where we got to experience a 7.0 earthquake and winds of up to 32 meters/sec. While I've always wanted to be in a wind tunnel, let me just say that I NEVER want to be in a typhoon with winds blowing that hard. As we were being blasted with air a screen right next to us was showing a real typhoon scenario and ceramic tiles and trash and large objects were flying everywhere. Scary.

The Wind Room

The next simulation we had to do was to find the exit in a building that was on fire. Of course, there wasn't actually a fire, but we did have to go through a mini obstacle course with passage ways filled with fake smoke that smelled like waffles and syrup (yummm).

There we are (symbolized by the green squares) trying to find our way out of the burning building and avoiding death by fire (red dots).

And finally, we got to play around with some fire extinguishers. This was actually super helpful as I have never actually set off one before!

All in all, now I feel better prepared should a disaster befall Kyoto, but I pray a day like that will will never come!