Jim: 1; Mr. Splashypants: 0

I'll let Jim tell you himself about their meeting at the sushi restaurant.

Sorry, Mr. Splashypants.

Is that all you see me as?

I like the new ads for rice on a few subway lines. They all feature one person with a bowl of rice for a head surrounded by regular people who are either chipper because they had rice for breakfast or falling asleep at work or on the train because they did not. The ricehead looks delighted or alarmed, respectively.
I think we have our first vegan suicide food.

I wish you tasted better

This triple berry KitKat has a hologram sparkly box and promises that your wish upon a star will certainly come true.
It tastes like a berry-flavored chemical plant.

This seems a little stalkerish and rear-windowy, but I love this old lady's rooftop garden, and how she walks around in an apron watering it all with a metal pan.

That explains a few things.

I have been meaning to mention, this is almost all from my cell phone on the train. Apostrophes come out weird and photos are low res and so on. But how else would you get to know so much about ads and quirks on the Tokyo subway?

Vice city heart, at last

I have been peeping into the construction site across the street for weeks, ever since I spotted the small blue Tokyo Metro sticker on a pipe sticking out of its red traffic cones. At last, on Saturday, with flat-screen TVs and white granite walls and Lego yellow floor strips, the Fukutoshin started running.
I took it on Sunday for the first time to get to the train that is normally about a 10-minute walk. It added about 20 minutes to that trip. The second time, we took it home from the middle of the city. The express train whisked us right past our stop, then sat in the tunnel for 15 or 20 minutes apologizing and running an audio (and video) loop about looking out for shady characters and not letting your strollers roll away. By the time we got a local train back to where we meant to be and walked up from the deep track, we had probably spent 40 minutes more than the old trains would have taken.
But it's pretty! They've put murals and mosaics on all the walls, and the seats on the platform
are clear acrylic. There's lots of frosted glass and glowing panels. And a weird pit of trackbed enclosed by concrete at Shinjuku that could be an unfinished track or could be art. It was cool over the weekend that everyone was walking around taking photos with video cameras, long-lens SLRs on tripods and lots of cell phones.
The name of the line means something like secondary heart of the city? The first part of it is usually "vice," as in "vice president." I could look it all up or something, but where would be the fun in that?

And the tracks are made of gold

Speakers on the subway platforms are Bose. This could be why announcements sound pretty clear. Hear that, NYCTA?

Stabby

Yesterday it was just a 3D computer animation, but today the news team has recreated the Akihabara intersection where the crazy guy plowed down the people then stabbed them. Note the knife that the yellow figure is holding, and the rental truck at the right. The red line on the cardboard road is the swerving route the truck took. (In front of the store where we bought our tv.)

I don't know if I just had a mad look in my eye or it was national nervousness over this incident, but when I sat down at the lunch table yesterday holding a little paring knife to cut my food, everyone at the table said, "Ahh! Scary!"

Maybe doll museums are automatically creepy

But this one wasn't taking any chances.

Uh, thanks?

We had dinner at a fancy Japanese fusion restaurant with a group of people who know the chef. As a special treat for his friends, he brought out a post-card sized tray made of tin foil full of something lumpy and greenish brown still bubbling and steaming. "Squid liver," he said. "Usually, I would throw it out."

Do your fighting at home

I like this series of ads that asks riders not to do at-home things, like chucking empty cans on the ground, on the train. I think this one is about eavesdropping on quickly resolved squabbles.

Neither fashionable nor joyful. Discuss.

As far as I can tell, all 26 Fashion Joyboards at Harajuku station are displaying billboards about cancer.
Harajuku has been shorthand for wacky fashion for years. Is this what they mean by the greying of Japan?

Warning: do not drink

This little aluminum bottle contains the "power" of 30 milligrams of "ukon."

After tasting it, I can only assume that "ukon" means "paint thinner."

Agree to incinerate

Jim was expecting a package from home, but instead got an envelope from the post office. (His name and address were spelled like the result of a bad game of telephone.) It was a notice from the quarantine department asking if they should burn or send back the contraband with his name on it - 200 grams of beef jerky. He decoded the English-like instructions and checked the box marked "incinerate." Why do I have the feeling that, somewhere, a paper pusher in a martial uniform is chomping on a Slim Jim?