the tall blond guy goes to japan

City Notes

Grand Central

Sorry about being lax in the last few day, about not putting anything to the site- a recent upswing in the amount of work to be done at the real job has taken mush time away from writing. So be it, I guess. But I'm going to make up for it today with a whole whack of entries, taken from my notes and pictures over the past few days.

One thing I noticed about this city, compared to other cities of similar size, is the amazing cleanliness of everything. The underside of trucks are washed and shined weekly. The gutters are spotless. One could eat off the sidewalks. Even the washrooms are spotless!

I'd always wondered how this could happen, even in this culture so obsessed with clean, cute things. Surely plant matter and spare paper must build up!

A few days into my time here, I discovered the reason: cleaner gnomes.

A cleaner gnome.

They're everywhere, cleaning up very quietly. Over 90% of them are female, most over 50. To me, being very tall, they're all amazingly short. They scuttle about, much like robots, cleaning everything in sight. It's quite amazing to watch. My hotel room fronts onto a street, so I'm afforded the luxury of people-watching from above.

Another thing that is very noticible here is the somewhat bizarre (to my eyes) sponsorships that take place. For example, Hello Kitty and friends are the official mascots of a big bank. I'm not sure which one (it's in Japanese, you see...) but I just call them the "Hello Kitty Bank". They've very easy to spot.

Japanese video game sensation Rodney Rappa is smiling from the windows of Dunkin' Donuts. Much to my surprise, when I bought a donut there the other day, I got a free rodney rappa desk calendar and a bunch of coupons. What the coupons are for are beyond me, because (once again) they're in Japanese. With my limited literacy skills, I think it's something about coffee.

Mailing anything anywhere is amazingly expensive. A post card to Canada costs Y110 (about $1.15). Strangely enough, people here seem to love mailing just about anything to just about anywhere. A coworker who has relatives here tells me that food and bizarre gifts are frequently mailed out of Japan to her family in Canada.

It could be because of the mascot:

Astro-Post-Boy!

Canada Post needs a mascot like that, something fitting, but something uniquely Canadian. Perhaps Ren and Stimpy.