If this announcement worries you

I was chomping on samples of fried chicken, cheese, and pickles in the endless underground Food Hall at Isetan department store around evening rush hour when a PA announcement emerged from the background whir of ambient noise. It started out with the usual three-note rising chimes and standard welcome: "Thank you so much for coming to the store today." But instead of continuing to "we're now closing, please make your way to the door," the calm female voice said "according to NHK, something earthquake something something. If this announcement worries you, please move to an open area and something crouch. Something something! Thank you."

The announcement didn't seem to worry anyone, so I wondered if I had misheard it.

I came home and started studying. A little listening comprehension is a dangerous thing.

Can you hear me now?

Cell phone design took an unexpected turn around here. Unexpected to me, I mean. In 1997 I got a phone that was your basic non-folding candy bar style, about the size and heft of one and a half twix sticks. I could just about conceal it in my palm, and I have small hands. When I brought it home, everyone thought I was kidding that it was a phone - compared to the heavy black folders and brick-like Nokias in the states then, mine looked like a novelty cigarette lighter. Except it wasn't as heavy.

Ten years down the road, I expected them to have evolved into jaw implants, or foldable electronic LED paper, or holograms. But no. They're the size of a pack of cigarettes, except heavier. Granted, they have the internet and GPS and barcode info-readers and infrared sharing and 4 megapixel cameras and MP3 music and video players. And they play live TV on Aquos screens in wide format. And record it, and show you program guides and subtitles. (It seems to be the TV screen and functions that make them heavy - there are some ultra slim ones without TV.)

Getting the phones was the most harrowing thing we've done since we've been here. The rate plans have 40-page booklets to explain them. I think that is a story for another day, but, in short, text messages cost a lot, email is cheap, and a plan for the same price that got me a gazillion minutes a month at home gets 142 minutes here. The internet usage rate schedule has its own page of graphs. But limitless television is free.

Wrap it up... and up, and up

I bought a little present for someone yesterday. The shopgirl put it in a little clear plastic envelope and then sealed it with a sticker, and I thought, how cute, that is a nice enough little wrapping job. Then she slid it into a shimmery draw-string bag and tightened and tied the strings into a little bow just so. Sweet! Then, she put that into a shiny red gift bag. Perfect! Which she then sealed with another cute sticker. Ta da! But no, then she measured out some ribbon off a brand new reel and fashioned it into a bow to put on the bag... and then put a silk rose wrapped in its own clear plastic cone onto the bow. And then another sticker over the whole thing. Then put that into a ribbon-handled glossy shopping bag, and then gave me a purple fake canvas "eco bag" to use for that and the plastic bag of convenience store stuff I was lugging around.
I'm pretty sure the value of the wrapping materials approached the value of the little present.
At each step I kept wanting to say, "that's fine the way it is," but it became mesmerizing to see what she'd stick around or on it next. Does the eco bag as the final step cancel out all the other layers?

I'm a temporary resident legal alien

This doesn't actually mean much with the type of visa I have, but it has nifty holograms all over it. And probably some kind of GPS transmitter.

Cone in a box

I think soft serve is especially tasty here. This is how our ice cream got packed up at the MiniStop when we said yes to "To go?" (How else would you have an ice cream cone?)

Yes, this is a ridiculous amount of packaging for an ice cream cone, but the top is edible. And you could probably put an awful lot of engineers on the problem of how to carry soft serve ice cream home in a plastic bag and not come up with anything more elegant. Was it really a problem that needed solving in the first place? That is a whole other, now moot, question.

Neither black nor white

I haven't paid much attention to J-pop in the last ten or so years, so when we got stuck behind a slow-moving road block of silent glamboy rockers and their excitable roadies shuffling up Takeshita Dori announcing a concert, all I thought about was getting through the crowd. We finally pushed past the group - to a few groans of the teenagers whose cell phone pictures we cut across - and I was surprised to turn around and see that the band looked kind of... old.

I showed the cameraphone picture to a friend later, and she said it was Glay. Glay! I know Glay! I mean, when I was here before, I answered the question "Do you know Glay?" a thousand times from junior high school kids practicing their English. (The careful, gleeful follow-up question, often asked in unison by three or four 12-year-old girls, was "What do you know Glay?") Their music was unavoidable, in commercials and tv shows and stores. I couldn't fight them, so I joined them, and bought their mini-cd and used the lyrics printed inside to study kanji.

Now we have the internet, so you can play along at home. This is one of the songs I remember.

Poor thing

Sunday brunch

This is the curry shop near our place. When you walk in and say hi, the curry man says, "Mild, medium, or hot?" The menu is hanging up in about seven spots around the place, some overlapping, in marker on faded construction paper, chalkboard, and dry erase board. Half of them have the reminder to please specify if you want mild, medium or hot before ordering. The place seats 10 at most, six at the counter. It seems unlikely that a failure to specify your spice level before sitting down would cause a backlog in operations, but it's his place and the curry is good.

Do not adjust your set

Happy Easter! Have a green tea KitKat. I am.
These are pretty easily mailable, so drop me a line if you'd like one. But quick! Like the pink cherry blossom (flavored?) edition before these, they're only available for a limited time.

Some friends have a way of always turning up just at the right moment for a coffee and a chat.

Voice in a box

In all the electronic and cartoon clutter that is Akihabara, these lip-shaped boxes jumped out from a store front display. The rainbow lettering says Pro Voice Tablets, and the small print claims that popping a few of the blueberry flavored pills before karaoke will unleash an astonishing new singing voice. Four of us got jostled standing on the crowded sidewalk examining the display for a while - what was in them? Could they possibly work? How? Was it a joke? A placebo? Our ticket to under-the-table export riches? The wonder tablets were for sale by the pouch of five, or by the box of ten pouches. Alex picked up a whole box. At a basement cafe nearby, we tried them out. The instructions say to let 3 - 5 tablets dissolve in your mouth without chewing. (They also suggest, with a disturbing vagueness, that if they "don't agree with your body," you should stop taking them immediately.)
We popped one each and waited while they dissolved. The size and taste were like a cross between Sweet Tarts and baby aspirin. Alex had the leftover fifth pill. He said, "I think it's burning a hole in my tongue." We all la-ed and oo-ed, but weren't convinced of any vocal changes. Later in the night, wine stung the spots on our tongues where we'd each let the tablets dissolve.
Verdict: uncertain. Swallowing the recommended dose might make you sing better, but it also might corrode your tongue. Small price to pay for karaoke fame?

"If you bestrew your flat TV, let me know it."

— Tokyo Notice Board, free weekly classified ads in English (or its evil twin).

Could this be their US comeback strategy?

Sakura chiffon cake.

There are cherry blossoms creeping onto and into everything (as noted), including pink Kit-Kats and a bottle of cheap cherry blossom booze at the local convenience store. The pale pink cake with the real blossom on top has been cooing from the cake case at every Starbucks I've been to for a week or two, and I finally tried it. It tasted.... like light vanilla cake with whipped cream spread on top. I don't know if you're supposed to eat the blossom on top or not, but I tasted it and it was kind of wet and surprisingly salty so I didn't.

A rarity in these parts, and a mere 45 minute walk from home.

I don't know what makes it a "California Style" laundromat as claimed, but I'll take it. Coin-op machines are Y400, including auto-dispensed soap, and Y100 per ten minutes of drying time. They'll also do home pick up and drop off service. It costs 2800 yen plus a 1000 yen sign up fee, but includes nifty looking laundry bags - including a mesh bag for your undies that they just stay in throughout the laundry process to "protect your privacy." They've also got tons of magazines, including a few American gossip mags. Viva Yoyogi Wash and Fold!

Instructions

"A woman shine!
A man become adult!"

-- Large font English suggestions on the cover of free magazine Go.Com, which is divided into halves. One side is called Men's love magazine; flipped over and read from the other side, it's Women's love magazine. (In English, it just looks like questionable grammar, but the Japanese headlines beneath them make it clear that these are orders.)

Standing Peeing Prohibited!

I love how this image is more of a thought bubble than a puddle... what, in fact, is being thought there? The text beneath says basically, "Let's behave." Above, "Standing Peeing Prohibited!"

We thought it was funny that someone saw a need to put up a sign like this.

Then.

We saw two men in suits watering the plants in the middle of crowded downtown streets last night in a span of 15 minutes and three blocks. That's nine p.m. on a Monday, friends.

This sign was in a dark alley under the train tracks. Compared to "at the front door of a busy bar," and "right next to a crowded pedestrian intersection," "dark alley under the train tracks" actually seems like a pretty good choice.

Test out the comments section with your own entry for the thought bubble, why not!

Taste of home

Sold at convenience stores. They also have Milan and Paris flavored drinks. Call me crazy, but I bet they all taste more or less like sweet iced coffee. There's a foil lid under the plastic one that keeps it all sealed up til you punch in the included straw.

This felt like a regular paper coffee cup until I finished it and went to toss it, and then realized it's solid plastic.

Happy St. Whiteday Day

On Valentine’s day in Japan, department stores have exquisite chocolate exhibitions that put New York’s annual Chocolate Show to shame. But there are no $25 admission tickets or lines around the block - just waves of women in business black nibbling at tiny but plentiful samples as they pick up armloads of beautifully wrapped boxes to give to male co-workers as “obligation chocolate.” There’s also “honmei” chocolate that you give to your “favorite.”
Anyway, the point is that as Hallmark imported bloody St. Valentine, wrapped him in a red ribbon and made us feel guilty about not buying in his name things adorned with either cupids, hearts or thorns, Japan imported Valentine’s day, spun it around backwards and then ran with it straight into the middle of March. There, in the late seventies, a candy company decreed March 14th White Day, a day when dutiful men across the land could return the gifts of obligation and love with marshmallows and white chocolate, and later, more expensive presents. (Why not? If you make up a holiday, you get to make up the rules.)
Which brings us to Brasserie Aux Amis, a French bistro in Tokyo with, perhaps, a chalk-wielding waiter who was dead last in a game of Telephone and ended up advertising their March 14 Chocolate and Flowers prix fixe meal as a celebration of jolly old St. Whiteday.