Outside the supermarket near my house, there’s an ATM- or a cash machine- in a little building. And close to this, there’s the supermarket’s smoking area. As the name would suggest, It’s just a small area behind a fence where people can indulge in their nicotine fix. Why they can’t even go to a supermarket without needing to have a cigarette is beyond me, but that’s another story.
Anyway, today I was waiting to use the ATM, and idly watching the smoking area. In the five or so minutes I was there, every single person who finished their cigarette immediately put a mask on.
Don’t they realize that given that they’ve just been smoking, using a mask is probably a case of too little, too late?
Category: General
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I’m Curious: Why Do Smokers Wear Masks?
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Unexpected Car Washing: A Supermarket Surprise
I saw a man washing his car in the supermarket car-park this morning. Just a normal man, washing a normal car. Not someone who worked for the supermarket or anything- in fact, he looked like he was waiting for his wife to come back from doing the shopping.
What was really eye-opening, though, was that he’d got a whole bucket of water and a sponge from somewhere! -
Oishii Gyunyu: Japan’s Marketing of Delicious Milk
In Japan, you can buy milk called ‘Oishii Gyunyu’. This translates to ‘delicious milk’.
And it is indeed delicious. I buy it often.
But I always wonder about one thing when I buy Oishii Gyunyu.
What’s that, you might ask?
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, why do they need to advertise it as ‘delicious’? It’s not really like any brand would say their milk was bad, is it?
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Boys in the Blizzard: Embracing the ‘Kaze-no-ko’ Spirit
There’s a proverb in Japanese, ‘Kodomo wa kaze-no-ko’. It literally means that children are like the wind. They play around in the wind even when it’s bitterly cold, and it’s said that because they’re like the wind, they shouldn’t stay indoors all the time, but should play outside.
Well, there was a blizzard this afternoon, and in the midst of that blizzard, I saw two boys walking home from school, both dressed just in shorts and short-sleeved polo shirts. Nor did they seem uncomfortable- they were laughing and joking as they walked.
I think that might have been taking the whole ‘kaze-no-ko’ thing to extremes!
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Hiroshima’s Winter Woes: No Heating and Frozen Windows
It’s been really cold over the past week. And here in Hiroshima, when it’s cold outside, most of the time it’s cold inside too. Central heating isn’t a thing, and even when houses have heating, they’re generally not well insulated. Hiroshima is just the wrong temperature: it’s normally not cold enough to need central heating, but when it’s like this it’s too cold without. I suppose it’s like a reverse Goldilocks principle.
Let me tell you how cold it’s been: yesterday, my curtains had frozen to the condensation on my windows!
Koborebanashi 