kenleewrites in 日本

Can you imagine anything worse?

The only thing that is more convenient than a convenient store in Japan is the vending machine. Pretty soon you’ll also have something to turn to when you are in distress. So. Let’s talk a little about vending machines in Japan. For starters, they are everywhere in metropolitan Tokyo. In front of buildings, behind buildings, around buildings, in alleyways, underground, above ground etc; you’re never far from any one vending machine… which is a good thing, since we all get thirsty at some point in our lives. When seasons change, so do the temperatures of canned coffees. You get hot coffee in winter and cold coffee in summer. Neat. The only thing that these thirst-quenching oases can’t seem to do is replenishing their supplies during events (that and giving you drinks for free).

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It had been a rather long weekend! I feel lucky that today turned out to be a holiday. Health-Sports Day, but I spent most of it in bed trying to rid myself of the weekend fatigue. Been quite successful at that. ^^.

Our 水餃子 (sui gyoza) stall. It was pretty bare in the morning. ^^. Lots of calligraphy though. We were all busy making gyoza.

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No, this isn’t New York or somewhere else in the States. Don’t let that star-spangled banner fool you. ^^

It’s been a while since I last went down all the way to Ginza. But given its reputation as a posh town, it’s always a good place to bring friends who are visiting shopping.

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When in bicycle country Japan, one should be careful when parking one’s two wheels. ^^.

Some Japanese are quite lax when it comes to bicycle security. While there are a number of bicycles securely parked at allocated parking grounds, which aren’t necessarily free, you can always find bicycles casually parked around here and there. Most of which aren’t even locked properly – locking one wheel is not safe in my book. Why? This is why.

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