the tall blond guy goes to japan

Excuse me, but are you a robot?

Grand Central

The best bread in the world is found in Japan. It's soooo tasty. No matter what you buy, you're sure to get something yummy. One night in Ginza, I grabbed a snack of two sweet scone-type things with raisins. Yummy!

There's a bakery down the street from the hotel, and one morning, we walked down there before work.

Breads'n'Stuff

Such choices! Overwhelmed, I opted out. My two companions, however, decided to feast upon the manna from the shelves and buy much bread. Verily enough to fill several baskets.

Well, maybe not that much, but enough to provide the shopkeeper with many props.

Props?

Yes! The man is a dancer. Or a robot, I'm not sure which. Every one of his movements is part of a highly effecient dance. The picking up of the breads, the putting of said breads into bags, the taking of money, the giving of change- everything! He even blinked at the correct times. I stood back in awe and watched this amazing bread man. Such effeciency of motion, and so quick and cheerful! He spoke lots of happy-sounding Japanese at us, so we smiled and bowed and thanked him. It's very difficult to describe how this man moves, I wish I could do a better job of it.

Continuing on our theme of food, I mentioned earlier that most places to eat will have plastic food set up outside, or at least pictures. It occured to me that it might be kinda neato to show what that looks like. So here:

A whole wall of plastic food!

It's a great idea, something that should make its way out of Asia and into the rest of the world. Real-life examples of the food that is served. Sure, it might be shiney and dusty, but you get the general idea. Better (for dumb illiterates like me) than a bunch of Japanese squigglies that I can only sometimes barely figure out.

The last food note (for now) concernes what appears to be Canada's unofficial ambassador drink to all overseas markets. No, not beer. Canada Dry.

A drink that is very difficult to find within Canada itself seems to be second only to Coca-Cola as the most popular carbonated drink in Japan. It's everywhere! There are very few restaurants in which you cannot drink "ginga-aiw" - and the wide majority of those are Canada Dry.

Canada's national drink?