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The ad-line reads “甘くて、ほかほか、チイーズ入り!”, translating roughly into “Sweet, Hot, with Cheese!”, which made me want to run right into the shop and scarf down a couple of these An-Burgers. A steamy mix of Anko (red bean paste) on a bed of margerine and topped with a slice of cheese, this burger is the winter offering from a major fast-food joint in Tokyo. It comes as a relief that every person of every nationality I’ve shown this photo to has had the same reaction.

The An-Burger is the latest entry in “Things Which Should Never Be”, where it will hang its head in shame next to pizza with corn on it (which I consider a crime against humanity).

Fuji-san is big. I grew up living on a mountain along the appalachian trail, so I thought I knew what made a mountain. But Fuji is in a whole other class. It is mind-numbingly, inconceivably huge.

The first time I saw Mt. Fuji, my wife pointed it out to me through the train window. I looked out at a group of impressively tall and craggy peaks and picked out the large central one. “That’s tall and impressive, ” I said. She laughed, and told me I was looking at the wrong mountain. Read the rest of this entry »

Staying in touch with the hometown is always a good thing when living on the other side of the world. My hometown* newspaper, the Warwick Valley Dispatch recently asked me to write a short article about Autumn and the Autumn festivals here in Japan. You can find out more about Warwick and the Dispatch at www.warwickinfo.net.

(Tokyo) In a city as massive as Tokyo, a person wouldn’t expect to notice the change in the season all that much. When I taught English in the Imabari countryside the signs of Autumn’s coming were hard to miss; the foliage slowly slid into warm reds and golds and the farmers busied themselves with the harvest. Even without these obvious hints, I woke a few days ago and knew without a doubt that it was Autumn. Read the rest of this entry »

He’s an elephant! He’s a robot! He’s a watering can!

He’s also only ¥100 (about 86¢US as of right now; although I’ve always found the ¥100 = $1.00 rule to be a fairly safe bet. It all balances out over time). We picked him up a few months ago from the 100 Yen shop when we decided that our backyard needing some color (green) in the form of plants. When I say backyard, I refer to the 3 foot by 8 foot rectangle of concrete and hard earth. Just enough room to hang out the laundry, keep a few flowers, and provide a little bit of earth for the local fauna to romp on. We’re luckier than most Tokyoites in that respect.

We were fortunate to get MechaZo-san when we did. He sold out shortly after. That’s because he’s kawaii, you see. Cute. Kawaii is one of the central pillars of modern Japanese civilization. Nearly every box, bag or package you pick up has a cartoon character on it somewhere. Half the time, the products are in the shape of a character themselves. Even my National Health Insurance Instruction booklet is set up as a comic. This is a good thing, because even thought I don’t know the kanji (squiggly alphabet character) for food poisoning or lycanthropy, I can sure follow along with the pictures. Stomach cramping and hairy palms have never seemed so adorable. Nor has watering the plants.

I walk the streets of Tokyo with my keitai always at the ready, my fingers twitching for it like a gunfighter for his side-iron. Keitai, by the by, is the Japanese word for mobile phone. Mine cost ¥1. About a penny. It’s not the snazziest available model, but the built in camera is pretty spiffy.

One of the great oddities here in Tokyo are the wildly inappropriate shop signs. Not “inappropriate” as in “naughty”, but rather “why does such a tiny shop have such a huge sculpture, and what does an octopus have to do with bicycles anyway?”.

I snapped this one in Asakusa a while back. It was out front of a shoe store – so there is some connection. A run-of-the-mill, everyday, nothing fancy shoe store on a back street. You may not be able to see it in this shot, but there is a wicked barb on the back of this flying boot. The ultra-modern sci-fi chrome stand in front of an old wooden shop only adds to the mystique.