Bud that sounds more improbable than if I got a wrong number text from The Queen starting "Charles, you lazy boy......."

It's a big & in your face kinda worldwide crowd. Not many zingers can't be out-zingered, anywhere, anytime...

And no more improbable than us sitting here now during a Canterbury vs Carney grand final...

But this big and in your face kinda worldwide crowd.....

.... I'm they're target? They're fishing for tadpoles?

Well, zing I guess.

There's been a few little things along the way, not just the LM thing, that made me think they wouldn't be would they, why him...unknowing courier I suppose (most of them are).
I'm sort of 50/50 on it this time, based on past stuff turning up amongst it, but I repeat, could be coincidence. You asked my suspicions, you got it...

Great day of footy though. Loved seeing some old faces again, legends galore & although it's more of a joke or charity day, enjoyed it heaps.
The score & who wins doesn't make much difference, but glad our lot made it through to the extra matches. Back to back silly grand final wins were a bonus. 

If you want to illustrate "went over like a lead balloon" you'd play Hoppa Snr's idiotic attempt at humour. What was he thinking?

bwhahaha! "Thinking".

Steve, I was having a google to see if I could find anything that resembled the blue food the local Chinese were eating that day. Oddly enough, there wasn't much in the results from China at all. Japan, however, seemed to have a lot of blue stuff. The following link shows Japan has blue beer & blue curry (yikes) amongst others :

 https://digjapan.travel/en/blog/id=11397

The closest thing I could find that did resemble what the Chinese were eating was blue dimsums, as that similar intense blue, similar size that fit in the hand, made their mouth look like they'd taken a bite out of a biro. It wasn't necessarily those they were eating, but closest I could find to describe it. The only example of those I could find was this link from India :

https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/ever-tried-blue-dimsums-head-to-north-campus-to-savour-this-vibrant-delight-1936309

Egads man...curry is very big in Japan but naturally recurring? Curry is always sweet variety too and I had an excellent curry filled donut (would you like it heated? Yes please! Arigato.) in all places at Delifrance...in Tokyo. Maybe some squid ink infused delight? Perhaps that sachet illustrated held the key? Can't recall seeing anything similar on the menu board?

Sorry, I got the 2nd link above wrong. It's fixed now with an edit.

It's possible the Chinese used food dye that day. I'd ask them but their grasp of English isn't the best, apart from the menu & only a few basics.

I'd struggle for food in Japan for sure. HD has the right idea, seek out a bakery for starters, best bet for something for everybody. Then fruit markets & a McDonalds.
Maybe a grocery store for simple things like instant noodles, potato chips etc.
It's great a lot of food places there depict everything with pictures, numbers, even vending machines to buy a number before walking in, makes it easier than trying to bridge the language barrier.

There are many 7-11s and another chain "Lawson", even more but I still can't work out what they eat for breakfast...had intended to buy cereal but only thing I could find was like over processed corn flakes with I would suggest almost zero fibre. Friendlys Hamburgers were good as were some of the sign board style eateries...udon set (set=combo) with tempura was the star of local cuisine

There's about 3 of these 20 I could scrape by with :

https://soranews24.com/2015/02/20/whats-really-for-breakfast-japanese-people-tell-us-what-they-usually-eat-each-morning-%E3%80%90photos%E3%80%91/

Udon with flakes of deep fried tempura batter...egads.

I just saw these things while I was on there :

https://soranews24.com/2014/03/29/strawberry-chocolate-shrimp-chips-for-when-you-want-sweets-plus-seafood-andor-are-pregnant/

Not for me, of course.
At least the strawberry ones only look like witchety grubs, while the chocolate ones look like....hrm....number 2's. (the horror)

Put it down to their lack of fibre!!

Steve, this topic has been a football chat obliterator...

But too late now...
The Japanese people as a whole just don't have a sweet tooth, only a minority there do.
For example, they can't stand icing on cakes. The common worldwide confectionary like Kit Kats, Mars Bars etc, are all remade there with much lower sugar & lower sweetness.
I'm surprised they prefer sweet chilli to hot chilli, but that's the way it goes. It's not like a sauce is lumps of solid sugar though.
They'd hate things like coco pops, fruit loops etc. They hate rice pudding, that's more of a British thing, so I'm sure they'd hate rice bubbles & anything like it.
They do have donut shops, but maybe they are kept simple, no icing & not covered in sugar, just filled with whipped cream/no added sugar. They have Starbucks which sell some sweet muffins & rolls.
I'm not sure what the standard ice cream is like there but probably much lower sugar than we'd be used to here. They have some radical options in that dept too, from spaghetti popsicles to crocodile ice cream.
It'd be all too much for me to last very long over there. I'd be living on bread & fruit. I wouldn't cope with burgers or mystery sausages or anything like that over there. Maybe some soups or rice dishes. If McDonalds had French fries & hot apple pies, maybe that would do for a light snack, but I'd pass on the processed meats, cheese burgers & everything.

Good topic for the off season.

Technically speaking formal Japanese meals contain a mixture of the 5 main flavours.

Sweet, Sour, Salty, Chilli, and whatever 

Going from memory here, but it is something like that.

You get a collection of very small dishes and can eat get the ones you want.

On my first trip to Japan we discovered this specialist desert place that did around 100 different types of deserts. 

For example I had coffee bean jelly with some other stuff, there were ice-cream sundae constructions that looked family sized.

This particular joint was a place where school kids would meet up with their friends and eat desert after school, I'm sure they shared the largest ones, nothing else would make sense.

it is hard to generalise with Japan they have a lot of most things..

When I looked at the Japanese Starbucks menu on the weekend, it all looked palatable really. It's a western franchise, which could be the major reason why. All the coffees looked good, variety of muffins (probably both sweet & savoury), cinnamon rolls, caramel waffles & so on. What worries me though, is around the corner there's probably a 100% Japanese clone of the café where the caramel waffles are probably covered in fried walrus noses, the muffins probably have a duck foot sticking out the top for a garnish & a sea urchin hidden inside, coffee without milk because they prefer snakes blood in it & so on. When I saw crocodile ice cream the other day, I just couldn't believe it, who would think of that kind of thing, it really does my head in. It doesn't mean there aren't sane options there if you look for places, but there's always something beyond comprehension next door or just down the road somewhere.
Glad to hear you guys got through it & enjoyed it. I think the tourist things would be great, as are the majority of people, but the foods are certainly a worry to me. Sure you can get marmalade on toast in a café there but you'll probably have to eat it next to someone having fish eyes & fermented otter tongues on theirs.

Nothing like a good fermented otter tongue to clear the sinuses. You start to take for granted the vending machines on every corner but I recommend if you get coffee...hot or cold...you go for black. That is unsweetened...a mistake I made with my first usage  of the machine...it was like drinking a coffee flavoured can of hot sweetened condensed milk...didn't have anythingreally exotic but a fugu pie may be on the cards for next time.

Most of the exotic stuff cost extra and is hard to find.

Asians also attempt to cook Western food, but as a general rule are terrible at it.
But stuff like Pizza is hard to stuff up, and McDonalds is the same worldwide.

You can taste a lot of the stuff by going to Japanese restaurants in big cities.e.g. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane.

If you had them all over your plate in Australia you'd clear the whole restaurant!
Go easy on the Fugu, you fruity monkey. Make sure you get consent from your wife first & it'd help if she has a week or so to spare while it wears off!
You never know, she might surprise you when you get home one day by having a whole fish tank full of them there!

HD, I've had pizza made by Asians in Aus & it just wasn't right. I think it's something you'd have to eat yourself to make it properly. Italians are the best as they've had it all their lives. So too have many Aussies but even they don't usually get it right, just passable enough, often shocking, but when you've had it made properly there's a big difference.
I've never been very fond of Japanese food, at least the things I've tried in Aus. Vietnamese can push it to the extremes as well, but I much prefer it to Japanese as it's not so bad really. Anything beyond those is usually a step up for me, Thai, Chinese, Malaysian & Korean is different again too. 

On the Legends Of League, what I thought was funnier than Hopoate trying to re-live his infamous moments, was they had dopplegangers of John Farnham & Tina Turner doing the singing. From reading through some complaints, I suspect the backing singers were dopplegangers as well.
It reminds me of Tom Baker as Dr Who in the 70's. The one called "Android Invasion". Key people such as military leaders, PM's etc were being replaced one by one by androids to make the cunning invasion plan easier. They even made a plastic replica of an entire village to fine tune the stupid things first. Those old shows were funny.

I'm listening to a live version of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother, excellent live, would been interesting to see it played live, seems to have a strong brass section. 
On both occasions the band were accompanied by the John Alldis Choir and the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble.^[62] "

There are a couple of nice folky songs on that album....a little different for Pink Floyd

Why is it always the stars of the game that run off to trial out on NFL.....??

Why is it never Lichaa or Tolman???
These guys are tackling machines and would kill it in NFL.....

I’ve got another one for you....


Why doesn’t Dman’s rock band play at Wembley Arena.... why do they play at Scalabrinni Retirement Village each Friday night?

Many rugby league players are the product of a life where they have been told how good they are all their lives...they can do no wrong in the eyes of many. Holmes would have been such a player. Had he been told as a kid to wake up and behave himself he may still be readying himself for 20019

Maybe Dman doesn't want to be rich and famous, and prefers the company of old ladies?

You are not wrong.....
You all lost me at Japanese....
I think you lost a number of people....But......its offseason, not much to talk about.

True that.
Maybe he doesn't prefer G-strings thrown at him from the crowd and prefers those old granny undies instead....

Marki...sometimes I think your mum forgot to tell you an "apple a day keeps the doctor away".....how can I put it less sublety...the secret of feeling good is having a good dump everyday. Many people, myself included like a high fibre breakfast cereal. The Japanese people don't seem to go for breakfast cereal so how the hell would they "feel good"...the drift is not easy to get.