This must be one spectacular toilet for it to have such a prominent sign...Never found it though. Hm.
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I was given some Danish-produced chocolate recently and with the chocolate came a small pamphlet explaining about Denmark and Morten Heiberg, the chocolate "designer". Also included was this Danish coin that according to the text is a "symbol of happiness" that should be carried around as an amulet and will help your wishes come true. I must admit though, that all I see is "1 krone" or about 20 yen worth of Danish money and I am somewhat sceptic of the amount of happiness that amount of cash can bring about and would definitely feel pretty silly wearing it in a necklace or stroking it for good luck.
Who is this...?
Saw this map on a t-shirt in a local clothing store. Is it just me or is something missing?
If you buy a bag of English muffins, a litre of low fat milk and a box of Kellogs Special K on sale at Daiei Supermarket, the total comes to 666 yen. So there.
5 points to whoever can guess where this picture is taken.
So I'm teaching these two high-school kids in Odawara as I do every Friday and am helping the students work out an assignment on the topic of giving directions ("excuse me, could you tell me..."), when suddenly I hear someone knocking on the door. Now, Ms. Nagashima, the old lady who runs the school usually returns before the end of the class in order to pick up the kids and drive them home, so I figured it'd be her and thus didn't pay much attention as I called out "come in!". However, as I look up from the student's workbook I'm surprised to find a woman in an electric wheelchair looking back at me from across the table. "Do you speak Japanese?" she asks, and continues to talk (in a random mix of English and Japanese) about how she wants to learn English and is looking for foreigners to communicate with. She is quite articulate and there isn't as such anything unusual about her (except for the fact that she suddenly barged in without explanation). However, her presence makes it a little bit hard to continue the lesson and since I am unfamiliar with the procedures on how to make people in wheelchairs leave (maybe I should have just pushed the reverse button on her controlpanel) I try to be as polite as I can and answer her questions. Eventually, though, I go back to teaching the students, figuring she'll probably leave if I make it obvious that we are actually trying to have a lesson, but she doesn't seem to mind and actually moves closer, picks up a workbook and continues to follow the lesson while muttering to herself. After a while Nagashima arrives and gives me a perplexed look, but the only reply I can come up with is a shrug as the lesson comes to an end. As we start cleaning up the wheelchair-lady excuses herself and heads for the elevator. "Who was that?" Nagashima asks. "Erm..." I reply.
Has anybody ever caught themselves thinking of people around as them as merely being part of the scenery? As if they're not really other humans that you can talk to and get responses from, but rather just there for atmosphere or as elements of a complicated backdrop? Non-interactive and following set patterns they move about like characters in those computer games where you can only talk to certain people, and the rest are purely graphical objects meant as eye-candy.
I sometimes wonder if my hand would pass right through them if I were to try to reach out and touch someone, or if they would react at all if I suddenly started screaming or jumping up and down. Maybe some of the more advanced characters are capable of basic pre-defined responses to questions regarding simple matters, such as how to find a certain place or what time it is, but overall they're only there for effect and shouldn't be touched. I suppose that's one of the reasons people are often startled when accosted by strangers, it's almost as if a rock or a tree suddenly woke up and started speaking to you.
Maybe this is especially true for Japan, where it at times seems like people are going to great lengths to ignore and block out their surroundings, in particular anything that might cause embarrassment or inconvenience. Thus, for example, you'll often see passengers on the train squirm due to having their shoulder used as a pillow by the person sleeping next to them, but rarely will you see anyone opening their mouth, asking the slumbering party to wake up or at least giving them a jolt, since this would cause a scene/disturbance.
In fact, usually the person asleep will continue sleeping until the person being used as a pillow reaches his/her destination and gets off the train. Actually, I just looked up "slumber" on the internet. Apperently it means "a natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended". It makes me wonder which of the two persons in the example above it applies to.
I woke up this morning after a restless night due to a mosquito having gotten into my apartment (again). The little insect decided to buzz around my ears all night, leaving me to flap my arms aimlessly in the dark everytime it made a pass of my exposed face. I wonder if mosquitoes consider themselves bad creatures, flying about like that and sucking people's blood, even though we never tried to harm them in the first place. I mean, the only reason we swat them is that they're trying to suck our blood! At times I can even get quite angry with a sole mosquito, circling around me waiting for an opportunity to do it's evil deeds. I feel like shouting: "Who do you think you are! This is MY blood! Do you think you can just fly about as you please drinking the fluid that keeps me alive!?". Although I guess it's useless to discuss this concept with an invertebrate, I still feel it's kinda rude of them to ignore my feelings on the subject. Mosquitoes are actually one of the only insects I have almost no qualms about killing. Other bugs I either feel sorry for or more likely I am just so creeped out that I can't bring myself to get close to them. With mosquitoes however, I am so offended that they're actually attacking me for their own selfish purposes, that I don't think twice before squashing an invading bloodsucker. I'm actually curious as to whether mosquitoes ever consider the risks involved in their trade. They are effectively risking their lives everytime they attack their prey. I guess blood is food for them, and they need it in order to stay alive so they have no choice. If you think of it that way, they are actually brave little creatures on desperate missions to provide food for themselves and their family. Are there any statistics on how many mosquitoes die of starvation every year? Anyway, I guess what I can conclude from all this is that my mosquito-net isn't working (looking at it now I can actually see a gaping hole in it) and that maybe I should start using those weird spirally things that smell horrible but supposedly keep insects away.