I like Kinder Eggs or, as they’re officially known, Kinder Surprises, although that seems a bit of a misnomer to me since there’s nothing surprising about the crappy toy you’re bound to find inside.
I have a lot of complaints about Kinder Eggs in fact, or perhaps I should say disappointments, but despite them, I still like those crazy Italian chocolates. Actually, I think I prefer Cadbury’s chocolate to Kinder, and you only get a tiny bit anyway. It’s almost an afterthought. But it’s the plastic yellow egg and toy hidden inside that are the key ingredients of a Kinder Surprise.
The plastic egg caused some controversy recently when the folks at Kinder saw fit to update to a new hinge-lidded model. I can only assume this had something to do with children choking on the pieces (in fact in the US, you won’t find any Kinder Eggs as they’ve been banned for this very same reason – draw from that what you will), but a perhaps unforeseen side-effect of this was to make the egg less fun. No longer can you fire Kinder lids across the room at an unsuspecting friend/enemy/cat.
The egg isn’t the only thing that seems to have deteriorated in fun. The toys are definitely not as good as they used to be. I’m sure in the past I had more builders and less crummy statues of some cartoon they’re trying to plug. Kinder: we want more stickers! Also, back in the day, I never used to get more than one toy from the same set because, clearly, there were thousands of clever (drug-addled?) Kinder creatives working on new exciting toy designs so that you could never hope to collect an entire set. Fast forward to today: I got two toys from the same set in a row – two feeble gliders that instead of elegantly demonstrating the principles of flight, were more apt to prove the theory of gravity.
And yet, regardless of how often and how abundantly Kinder Eggs disappoint me, I still like them and live in the hope of finding that big build bounty. I want hundreds of little choking hazard pieces. I want stickers and instructions and movable parts! And I really want one of those giant Easter Kinder Eggs. Please feel free to buy me one 
The mere mention of Japanese food can evoke such diverse reactions as, “yuck, raw fish” to “mmm, I love sushi”, but the association with sushi is always the common factor. However, sashimi and sushi are not the only Japanese dishes out there and, although these days more restaurants are cropping up in London serving cuisine such as okonomiyaki and yakitori, most Japanese dishes continue to remain a mystery to the West. Being half-Japanese, I’ve grown up eating a variety of Japanese home-cooked meals and my absolute favourite is a type of rice dish called donburi – in particular, a recipe called oyakodon.
It’s late Sunday afternoon at Sudbury Hill – not exactly the social hub of London: it’s more of a greasy hole lurking at the periphery of ‘Greater’ London. Waiting for a bus, my wandering attention is assaulted by a violent splash of colour on the other side of the road. A girl strides along the pavement wearing bright-red thigh-high boots. Incongruous? Just a little bit.