Living in Japan #6 – A collection of strange and wonderful things
Posted on | January 16, 2010 | 8 Comments |
For lack of better things to write about, I wanted to make a list of all the strangest things that I’ve seen in Japan so far this visit…Also included is “strange drinks you can find in vending machines!”
Around town
1. A mother breaking my cycling with stupid things record with three children (all about primary school age) on the same bike (two on the back, one on the front, all with helmets and strapped into chairs). Crazy.
2. A man whose job it is to straighten up all the bikes in the free public bike park by the station after all the commuters pile in and shove their bikes in any old how. I say hi every morning.
3. Being shown the room catalog for a fetish hotel by the grandmother-age lady proprietor. I could never get used to that…
4. Following a single, 20-ish year old woman alone down a dimly lit alleyway in Shinjuku for 400 yards and her not even turning round once to check who I was. Japanese people are far too trusting.
5. Being served sashimi from a fish, the rest of which was still moving on the plate. Apparently that’s a good sign it’s fresh.
6. Watching Cinderella and Pinocchio on tiny TV screens while eating Japanese curry in Tokyo tower.
7. Enormous (1-2 hour long) queues outside the Shinjuku Krispy Kreme. They’re doughnuts, people! NOt gourmet food!
8. The fact that you often see people buying things from vending machines, but very rarely see them actually drinking them. In fact, there seems to be an unspoken rule not to eat or drink openly on public transport (I guess that’s why most anime characters sit down to drink their vending machine coffees). Doesn’t stop me though…
9. Seeing a transsexual/transvestite couple on the train – you had to look closely and listen to them, but the “man” was a spotty boyish girl and the “girl” was a tall, effeminate boy in a skirt. Actually, the boy was particularly convincing. Also, saw a transvestite man in a skirt suit going to work on the morning commute. They’re not all that common in England, I have to say.
10. Really old tramps. Like, tramps who have been tramps all their life. Professional tramps if you will. They sleep around Shinjuku station and under the bridge near Seibu Shinjuku. All the tramps in the UK are quite young – made homeless through drugs or other unfortunate circumstances. They probably die quite young but here, they live on and on…
11. Hundreds of people doing a job that would be done by two people…in the same amount of time – for example, around 10 engineers fixing a (short) escalator. For hours. Or 5 people directing traffic where it’s obvious where cars should go. Or at Comiket tons of people acting as barriers holding sticks. Could you not afford Tensabarrier(TM)?
12. Housewives drawing enormous sums of money from cash machines to put into other cash machines to pay the monthly bills (thereby avoiding the nominal transfer charge for transferring money from bank to bank – about 200yen)
13. Cat cafes! – Cafes you can (pay to) go to to sit and drink a (normally priced) cup of coffee. Sort of like a host bar but for people who are more of an animal persuasion…
14. People in parks walking their animals – Not so strange, you might think, but we have seen at least two people walking cats (without leads) and one person in Yoyogi koen with three cute lop-eared bunnies. Seemed quite difficult to catch them though…
Drinks and Things
1. Soba tea. Ugh
2. Black bean tea. Uugh.
3. Corn soup in a can. (actually this is quite nice)
4. Bean soup in a can (Shiruko) – I don’t wanna know what this tastes like…
5. Tangerine jelly in a can. Yay! Jelly in a can!! Note the coffee jelly in a can to the left of it.
6. The tissue packets given out a Comiket – Just that little bit bigger than the usual size – Man-sized you might say, for activities that men do. At home. After Comiket.
7. Fried chicken cartilage flavoured crisps. These appeared in my research lab one day. They havent been eaten yet.
8. Turmeric flavoured tea (doesn’t taste of anything)
9. A whole pig intestine in a ball (available at all good supermarkets), looking rather like an alien brain of some kind.
10. Probiotic toothpaste – we got this for free at my research lab and it kinda tastes like what you don’t want your mouth to taste of in the mornings. Obviously. And then your teeth feel worse in the mornings. Someone obviously hasn’t done their homework…
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8 Responses to “Living in Japan #6 – A collection of strange and wonderful things”
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January 18th, 2010 @ 8:21 am
Awesome list!
Yep! I definitely love Japan for all the quirky things it has that are different from the US. =)
I really do like that the vending machines offer hot drinks.
It’s so useful in the winter.
I do like the corn soup in a can.
Warm Strawberry Milk (Ichigo Milk) is also quite good.
Hehe, yah, I don’t understand what the big deal with Krispy Kreme is though. :D
January 19th, 2010 @ 2:40 am
Alright, could someone explain the jelly in the can. Is it soft so it slides out of the can and you eat/drink it or does the top come off so you can eat it with a spoon or something?
And is it just me and my corrupt mind or doesn’t the can of “Super Lemon Soda” next to the jellies just seem a little dirty?
As for the fried chicken cartilage flavored chips maybe it is a healthy version of the pork rind. Also I can save some time and taste-buds that just think of a bacon flavored Cheetos/cheese puff and that is basically a pork rind.
And I hate Krispy Kreme, actually all yeast doughnuts. The only good doughnut is one that is made a heavy cake batter.
January 19th, 2010 @ 3:59 am
The jelly in a can is cut up into small chunks so it comes out through the opening. And no, Super Lemon Soda doesn’t sound dirty…even to me O_o
I think you can’t really classify Krispy Kreme as doughnuts – they’re mostly filling with an extremely thin coating of dough. So maybe jamnuts?
January 19th, 2010 @ 2:28 pm
The jelly cans are odd. They say on the side “Shake ten times”. The very first thing I wondered was, How does one count a shake?
Instead, I just got at it for a minute.
I also love the lift attendants, in a lift that can only fit 6 people.
At least you live in Tokyo with their cosmopolitan oddities. I have the inaka, with it’s bumkin oddities, live the old men who pee in the middle of the street and the old women bent permanently at a perfect right angle, who shuffles past my place at 6 am in one direction, and returns in the other direction at 10 pm, every day.
January 20th, 2010 @ 5:09 am
I meant the picture on the can… Honestly I am not sexual attracted to soda. To be honest though it would be an economical fetish, you get a drink every time you get off and you could work off some of the calories. Plus you could recycled the can afterward which is good for the environment.
January 21st, 2010 @ 12:53 am
Where do you live, Akakori? And surely you count a shake with “one up and one down”…
January 23rd, 2010 @ 3:41 pm
Up in Ibaraki. I’m in the south of the prefecture so I’m only an hour away from Tokyo, but as soon as you cross the border into Ibaraki it’s like you left civilization. Watch Shimotsuma Monogatari to get an idea of it – great film.
January 28th, 2010 @ 10:58 am
One of these days I will save enough money to go to Japan.
One of these days!
I am getting tired of IRL but I am too lazy to save money!
Sigh!