Potpurri for a 1000, Alex.

More odds and ends from Husbandsan!


Engrish! This is an odd thing that comes in one of three forms. You get the funny but (probably) accidental ones like the hair salon called S perm. or you can get the japanization of words like hamu to chizu sandichi. Or you can get the ones that are very likely crafted by an English speaker like `life is happy, so live like funny fish. Is stylish`. Or some stupid crap that is syntactically and grammatically correct but makes no damn sense.

I`m not so much curious about what is says, so much as curious about what they think it says.

Now I don`t feel so bad for Americans who get Kanji or Chinese writing tatooed on themselves whithout knowing if it`s correct or not. Can`t be any worse than Engrish.

This place is like a hive. Tokyo has too many people and is CRAZY! Osaka is even worse. I take pride in my ability to navigate my way around but I have never had more of a hard time than in Osaka. Moscow, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, No Problem! Japan is a whole different kind of megalopolis.

Part of the problem is that in the western world, we always orient (so to speak) our maps so that North is up. Here, up is the direction you`re looking, so you have to watch out for what direction is what.

How important is the bow? Let`s put it this way, the workers bow to the incoming train, the ATM bowed to us when we got money, and the snack lady bows to the train car as she leaves it. I won`t be surprised if we still bow when we get home talking on the phone.


They stack park their cars here. Like in a grain elevator. I`m still not sure how they get them down.

Thought we saw a Yakuza interaction in Aomori. An older dude (boss) touched hands in greeting with a younger guy (underling?) when passing on the street. Strange, as most Japanese aren`t physical or touchy-feeley. Usually they bow etc. It was weird. We both caught how odd it seemed in comparison of the other stuff we`ve seen.

Blah blah blog.