Hi all of you readers back in the states, and welcome to any International visitors!
Joel gave me a great idea. He said I should write a mailbag column where I answer people’s questions about Japan. This is a great idea. Now I just need some darned questions. Comment them below, please, and I will answer them in a future post.
Here’s some questions I’ve already received:
Gordon from Oakland asks, “How can the streets be so clean when it’s impossible to find a trash can?” That’s a great question, Gordon! I have absolutely no idea. There’s no litter, yet if I have something to throw away, I need to carry it around with me for an hour until I find a place to toss it. That’s the trick, apparently. Japanese people simply cart their trash around with them until they have an opportunity to throw it away.
Gordon from Oakland asks, “How crazy are the vending machines anyway?” Not really that crazy, Gordon, at least not that I’ve seen. There are certainly a lot of them, both for drinks and cigarettes, and the number of brands and varieties of water-based drinks and coffee drinks is staggering. Also, some of the machines have both hot and cold drinks, which is really neat. My favorite thing to buy out of a vending machine is plain old bottled water. Got to keep myself hydrated with all of the walking I’ve been doing.
OK, now let’s get some questions from someone other than Gordon!
Today I went to the Tokyo National Museum, which was a very nice museum, but I was pretty bored pretty quickly. The coolest stuff in there was the Kofun burial sculptures. When I get my camera hooked up to my Mac, I may add a photo if one came out. They keep it awfully dark in the museum, and no flash photography is allowed, natch.
I’m at the Apple Store in Ginza right now, and I am using a Japanese keyboard. What this means is that a lot of the punctuation is in the wrong place, if I type an incorrect key I switch the keyboard to Japanese, and worst of all, the space bar is REALLY tiny. It makes it difficult to type. So that’s going to be the whole post.
3 Comments
October 2, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Hey, I remember seeing very stylish women stopping at the recycle/garbage cans and unloading tons of trash from their Gucci bags! You just gotta start stuffing your pockets with trash…
October 7, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Hey man– question for ya:
have you been to a maid cafe yet? I watched a cool youtube clip about them, seem to be inspired by anime, manga, and video games.
and is there ‘used’ games in the video game stores there (like we have at gamestop back in the states)?
im excited to pick your brain when you get back – for my Japan trip upcoming.
cheers,
carlos
October 14, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The coolest thing I got from a Japanese vending machine was a set of Pokemon business cards. I still have some, but, sadly, my address and phone number have changed.