Many Things

Hey, I wanted to rant about something silly.
(Pic unrelated)

But yeah. Perhaps one of the stranger things about Japan is their paradoxical approach to cleanliness. Every street is clean, with no litter, but NO garbage cans. At all. Like, anywhere. Yet there are countless vending machines with only one recycle bin near them. Also, the Japanese wear masks when they are sick, but lift them so they can cough. They have super futuristic toilets in public restrooms, with every button imaginable which can rinse you, air dry you, and they even have a button to make "Flushing Noise," (in case you're farting a lot or whatever, the fake toilet flush drowns it out)... but many of these bathrooms DON'T HAVE SOAP. Unless you are in a restaurant or a sort of fancy place, there is no soap in the bathroom. In some places, there is no toilet paper either. You must go outside the restroom before you do your business. There will be a little tissue vending machine which you must insert 100 yen (a buck) to find salvation. What the hell? A place so futuristically clean and efficient is so backwards in basic handwashing and toilet-paper-having? All I can say is "X___X" Thankfully, every restroom I've been in has had at least one Western toilet, and hasn't been all squatters (I think the Western toilets are mandatory, perhaps for the convenience of the elderly or blind.)

Speaking of blindness, there are raised markings on the sidewalks of all major cities (and buildings) in Japan, so that blind people can navigate the city more easily. (I don't have pictures right now, but I will provide tomorrow perhaps.) You can feel them through your shoes; the dashed ones mean "Walk straight ahead" and dotted ones mean "Stop, or a car will hit you." There are also tons of audio cues around the city (cuccoo noises for street crossing, and little doorbell rings for important places like bathrooms and subways) Cool huh?

Random pics from yesterday and today's Ann-adventureeeeee:

Yesterday:
Some fancyfancy restaurant

Hair Win was another restaurant, only with a horrible, horrible name. Not only do I not want to think of hair in my food, but it also sounds like "heroin" when you said "hair win" aloud.

Another stupid creepy scrotum-totem

A shopping avenue in Kyoto, where we desperately searched for.... MEAT

Glorious, glorious meat. All you can eat-meat. For 20 bucks each. We hurt them as much as I hurt myself.


So it was yakiniku (grilled meat) and/or shabu shabu (literally the sound of the meat boiling in water). It didn't take long for me to realize that boiled meat is stupid and dumb and grilled meat is far superior to its icky and lamely-named counterpart, shabu shabu.


Ann-venture Time!: (I didn't take any pics of Ann ;-; I'm a jerk. Sorry, Ann)
Gion alleys

Random mini-temple in Gion

Bigger temple in Gion, featuring wrong-location Michael.


It was awful pretty but it was really crummy outside and we're not big temple-people in the first place :x


Different cities:
Whale in a mall.

Whale in a subway.


Osaka is awesome and full of trinkety silly toy shops and stuff :D


The opposite side of this pillow had less clothing, so uh.. I thought of the children.

Also Ann is a sweetie. I hope we can meat again:
Maybe we'll just have a pizza party when you get back?





also, video of what may either be the diver's supervisor or a huge fan of cleaning tanks: