the tall blond guy goes to japan

Bungee Spouts

The Daily Yomiuri

It's the little things that make a culture so different. The fact a different language is spoken all over the place doesn't matter much... they're all the same words, just expressed with different noises. The most important things are the little ones, like this:

Mayonnaise... or tartar sause...

The stuff inside doesn't matter, it's the packaging that interests me. Look at it carefully. You rip the packet open along the top, exposing that one small spout. This way, you don't get the condiment all over the place when you're opening the package! So clever! I love adding sauses to things now, just so I can use the packages.

Ooooh! And the mustard here - even the regular stuff that comes with take-out food - is soooooo good! I love hot mustard (must have got that from my dad), so this is really good stuff. None of my co-workers like mustard, so every night I get lots of little mustard packets. Yay!

Bungee window washers

This is the scene outside my window. I look across the street to a brand-new office building. The office is still in the process of moving into the building. That's how new it is. What with the obsession of being clean here, the windows are cleaned almost daily by these scary suspended-by-a-rope people. At home, there are some of these people, but they progress slowly. Here, they're literally bouncing around the outside of this building, cleaning windows and ledges with some kind of religious fervour.