What's cuter than emphysema?

Japan Tobacco (web site tagline: "Welcome to Delight World") says that while 40.2% of Japanese men smoke, 12.7% of Japanese women do. 

Women aged 20-29, the youngest age group reported, had the lowest smoking rate of all the age groups at 11.4. The smokingest women by far were the 60+ group. And that can only last so long.  Get marketing in here, stat!

Which brings us to Fram.  The skinny raspberry menthol cigarette with a flowery pink box. 

They really do look delicious and fun. Like a combination of iPods, mentos and lip gloss.

Infuriating.

(Was that a haiku?)

Any color you want

As long as it's clear vinyl with a white plastic handle.

Top commenter Trixie raised the excellent point that see-through umbrellas should cut down on run-ins. And they do make it easier to see where you are going. 

However, I am frequently the only person squinting quizzically up at the sky with a dry umbrella rolled tight while people under nearly-dry umbrellas bump and scrape each other left and right squinting quizzically at me. (Once, a colleague walking next to me in a light mist asked why I didn't put up my umbrella. I said it was because it wasn't raining.  She gave me a confused translation-error nod.) 

Clear umbrellas make it easier to see other people, but 99.9% umbrella usage at the first hint of precipitation means there are a lot more umbrellas on the street on any given cloudy day, so, poke-in-the-eye-wise, it's a wash.

Yer not selling it

An alert reader asked if this meant "blend" or "brand." 

Take your pick - either way would be equally untrue.

News flash

Tokyo trains are really crowded sometimes. (And only then do they park in the tunnels for 15 minute stretches.)


UPDATE: I got a "Proof of train delay" slip with a notch punched out at the 40 minute mark. I was going to take a picture of it, but my boss rolled it up into a tight ball and threw it out.

Einstein was a Japanese man

In which we discover the true meaning of E=mc2... turns out it stands for the Japanese words for, "Great! It's really simple!"

The price of pee is eternal vigilance

Starbuck's bathroom at the forefront of the war against terror.

Tommy Lee "Rainbow" Jones

Asking, I think, if your job and your canned coffee are treating you right.

This guy is getting to be a real problem

Quit sticking your face in people's bags already.

The Silence of the Cicadas

Some signs that summer is over creep - bulky sweaters in designer showroom windows, hot canned coffee at the small grocery store, fat steamed pork buns by the Lawson's register.
Others fling themselves buzzing into your screen doors. The cicadas - semi - drone a high-decibel sonic backdrop all summer. They're loud like a buzzing neon light. Like a whole roadside of neon zapping with pulsating current.
They're all supposed to live only a week or so, and their squished carcases have been getting ground into the sidewalks for weeks. But it was only in the last few days that they started skittering onto our eighth floor balcony, so big and heavy and clattery that they seem more like spring-loaded tin wind-up toys than insects. They thud when they hit the glass and rattle as they lie on the floor, buzzing in short, desperate bursts instead of in their usual long, rhythmic whirs.
We just left them out there the other night, one on each balcony. In the morning, both were gone.

Some perspective

This is how you know the bus is coming.

Help, help! I'm being repressed!

Cell phone posting has stopped working. And it just took seven minutes for this page to load up. Now you will never see Tommy Lee Jones' stony mug advertising/scaring people away from Boss coffee or the mysterious reactivating bug bite on my ankle that is surely something exotic and horrifying, though some people think it looks like it's healing.

UPDATE: well, looky that. He's been at it for a while. In related news, there are only so many different jokes you can make about Tommy Lee Jones being the Boss.

We have crab bread!

Judging from the sell-by date and the shelf space next to the packaged donuts, guessing that no actual crabs were harmed in the making of this product.