That moment when you're studying kanji....

...and you discover that the character for "juice" (汁) is the same as the kanji for "pus".

You realize that you can never look at your fruit juice (果汁) the same way again.

mmm... 100% fruit pus.

Sorry for the neglect!

Apparently when I have issues with one post (my phone didn't save it) and the discover a book series I can't put down (observe the evidence in my Books of 2014 list), I neglect my blog.

Fortunately for my blog, the bookstore doesn't have the rest of the series and I have yet to place my order on Amazon (btw, Amazon in Japan seems to do free shipping on books without a minimum order price) so I won't occupy all of my time reading and will definitely make it up to you, my dear readers.

Thus, for the next couple weeks, I'll post three times a week (likely MWF) to make up for lost time. For now, here's a picture of an interesting food combination I noticed in a flier we received yesterday.

Grilled cheese curry paella: so many things wrong here.

I'm back!

...not that I really went anywhere, but I had a nice, little vacation from deadlines (even the self-imposed kind).

I'll do a more proper post on Thursday, but for now, I'll leave you with this lovely ad from the train.
 

Excessive packaging is excessive

If I bought a bottle of ketchup in Canada, I would expect just that: a bottle. It would have a little seal under the cap, but that's about all the extra packaging it would have.

Not so in Japan. Here, when you buy a bottle of ketchup, it comes in a bag.

Subtle strip club is subtle

I'm going to wrap up this week by being a little lazy. Here's a picture I took back in March of a strip club I saw wandering around Ikebukuro one day. Someone seemed to think that calling a place "Men's Private Theater" would class up the look, though the blacked out windows just scream "this is a strip club".

Monorail

Here's the Tokyo monorail in Shinagawa.

 

Yes, in addition to having a million trains, Tokyo also has a monorail.

Random

This post is late and it will be both short and sweet with a more proper one to follow on Thursday (possibly Friday). Granted, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words and I think that this picture that I took at daid's bank says just so much about this part of Japan:

It's an umbrella stand. Umbrella stands are pretty ubiquitous around here, you'll find them near the entry ways to many (perhaps most) stores. This one is somewhat odd though because it is equipped with locks so you can store your umbrella and nobody else will accidentally take it because they look roughly the same (or steal it because they forgot theirs).

Noise pollution

In Canada, the typical street noises usually involve traffic, neighbours doing something outside, the occasional siren, maybe a car alarm or some construction. In Japan, these sounds exist, but they are joined with another: voice announcements.

I can't be sure, but I think the only time I heard someone using a microphone just out on the street in Canada (not at a concert or some event) was one time back when I was living in Hamilton. Some guy was standing on top of an upturned milk crate preaching while his kid sold bibles next to him at the corner in front of Jackson Square.

Then it struck me as odd: microphones or megaphones really don't belong out on the streets unless you're at a parade (or some other event which has been cleared with the city). One lone guy with a megaphone selling his beliefs is just strange.

Here though, there are frequent voice announcements. Not only does our city have daily announcements at 3 in the afternoon and again at sunset to tell children to go home (or something), but there will be someone announcing something within earshot of our apartment a few times a week.

Usually, it's someone with a truck and a pre-recorded announcement driving by, but the other day, I heard one that was especially clear and seemed nearby. So I looked out the window and saw a woman with a megaphone in the parking lot for the neighbouring building. She finished her announcement and moved to the parking lot for our building to repeat the same announcement.  Then she moved to the next parking lot to repeat the same message.

If we go downtown, it's pretty common to see people with megaphones standing near tables outside train stations selling something (or trying to get votes, it's not clear) or for people to stand on boxes or ladders outside shops encouraging potential customers to come in.

It's not just the people advertising that do this either. The firetrucks include voice announcements asking people to move out of the way and thanking them for doing so. This is in addition to the sirens which should be pretty clear indications that one should get out of the way.  There are some trucks with turn signals that indicate their turning direction audibly as well, but not all of them. 

This is all still pretty strange to me. I'm used to cities that don't care to let children know when it's time to go home. I'm used to laws that tell people they can't use megaphones without a permit to just run around and advertise whatever.

Happoshu: the not-beer "beer"

Beer is a drink we all know and love (though perhaps love can be a strong word for all of its various incarnations) made of fermented malts. Japan has a tax on malt and beverages made with it. The result is that actual beer (the kind that gets labeled ビール here) can cost a fair bit more than other alcoholic beverages with a similar percentage of alcohol.

In response, companies began making products that taste similar to beer, but with less malts or none at all called happoshu. These will cost much less than beer, but they are typically designed to taste very similar to beer. They are also much better than some of the popular beers in Japan (e.g. Asahi Super Dry) although they are nowhere near as good as some of the nice beers here (e.g. Yona Yona).

Happoshu seems to get an unnecessarily bad reputation in English-language sources for some reason though. Personally, if I'm at a store with a limited beer selection, where all the beers are this light kind of beer that's supposed to have a broad appeal, I'll generally go for the happoshu because it's similar enough and a lot cheaper. Unless I'm in the mood for a fruity drink, then it's chuhai time.

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Sorry for the sporadic posting this month. Our internet has been a little fishy and sometimes decides it doesn't want to load Blogger at times when I want to write and post things. I'll aim for more frequent posts for the next couple of weeks, but I can't promise a super regular schedule because I don't know if I'll actually be able to post when I want to.

Train safety poster

Around train stations, I'll sometimes see these posters which I find inexplicably funny.

I suppose it's the way the salaryman is depicted as being drunk that's so funny. It's effectively conveyed without the usual sort of cues of drunkenness. He's not holding a bottle or half-passed out; instead, he's merrily (if haphazardly) walking along the edge of the platform without a care in the world and only his loosened tie, rosy cheeks and obvious poor decision making tell you that he's probably not sober.

It might also be funny to me because it's a businessman who is drunk instead of a student or someone who is more typically associated with drunken behaviour in Canada (like people wearing hockey jerseys after a playoff game). While I assume that business people go out and get drunk after work with their colleagues sometimes in Canada, it's not something I think of as happening as much (perhaps in part because the transit isn't generally as good so many people have to drive to work).

These posters advertise the existence of these emergency stop buttons (shown on the centre left and bottom right of the poster), which can stop an incoming train if someone has fallen onto the tracks. It's also possible that it's supposed to give some lesson about how safety on the platform. In the bottom right of the main image, there's some statement about alcohol (presumably about alcohol-related accidents around the train platform, though I mostly understand "platform", "alcohol" and "63.5%") and one might note that the drunken salaryman isn't the only person being unsafe (there's someone strolling along the wrong side of the yellow line reading a book as well).

One thing that I quite like about Japan is that even though I can't read these kinds of posters especially well (yet), the message is relatively clear and the posters themselves often pretty cute. I'm not sure I can say the same about posters I'd see on mass transit in Canada (where images of poorly-rendered cartoon characters standing around are sometimes supposed to tell you to be polite on the bus).

If you're a dude...

...and you were ever confused about how to use the washroom, this sign helpfully illustrates correct usage.

Personally, I think that the best parts are that he has an ass and is leaning back ever so slightly. Whoever came up with this sign was clearly going for realistic motion.

Fun with acronyms?

Yesterday daid and I were chatting and somehow the subject of the NHS came up. He'd forgotten exactly what it stood for, but that it was national health service... or system and we'd both forgotten exactly what the "S" stood for.

He suggested that the "S" stood for "sabretooth" and so this happened:

Obviously a candy striper sabretooth is the answer to everything.

Note that this has very little to do with the actual NHS apart from the acronym. Although I haven't experienced it, I don't think the actual NHS provides "service with a scowl" and it would be nice if all countries were sensible enough to have a single payer health system that includes such "luxuries" as dental and optical care (unlike, say, Canada). However, I suspect that a sabretooth cat would not have the best bedside manner and so the tagline was born.

Also, I know that the candy stripe uniform was a thing in the US (in the '40s, even), but it was the first outfit that sprang to mind.