Once or twice a week, I have to walk past quite a large rice field. As the year progresses, it’s always fascinating to see how the seasons change, as reflected in the rice field.
Right now, the field is bare. It’s just brown earth with a few dead stalks, presumably from last year’s rice plants, mixed into the soil. Now we’re in February, though, it won’t be too long before the farmers start to flood their fields and then plant their rice seedlings.
(more…)I used to love Tonomi Station because it was old, a little bit ramshackle, but it was how it had always been, and it was wonderful. But a few years ago, the station building was completely rebuilt. It’s very bright and airy, and really it is a much nicer building, but it’s much simpler and it lacks the rundown, old-fashioned charm of the original station building.
And then on platform three (which is actually the only other platform) there used to be a big wooden shelter, almost as big as a barn in a way, with seats inside it, but now that’s gone completely, and all that’s left is just three rows of seats out in the open on the platform, which is fair enough, but if it’s raining, you can’t use them at all. At least on platform one, there is the station building which provides shelter. It’s progress in one way, I suppose, but, in another way, very much not so. Sometimes with the JR Sanyo Line west of Iwakuni, I get the feeling that for the lesser stations, it really is a case of managed decline. I very much hope that I’m wrong.
I’ve just seen a young man on the tram in Hiroshima, with a huge roll of masking tape on his arm, like an outsized bangle.
I’m sorry, I’m not even going to attempt to ponder why this might be. I just hope he’s heading to do some DIY or something. The alternative… Well, I dread to think!
Oh my goodness. I’m normally listening to music or a podcast, so I’ve never noticed before, but the current chimes before announcements on Hiroshima trams makes it sound like you’ve reached a whole new level on a video game.
So… Is Hiroshima Station the final boss?
You’ve probably heard of a chocolate teapot, as in the phrase ‘as useless as a chocolate teapot’.
But what about a concrete ship? This might sound as crazy as a chocolate teapot, but in fact, concrete ships — that is, ships built out of concrete — did actually exist.
What’s more, two of them still do exist, and are recognisable as ships. They can be found in Hiroshima Prefecture, in Yasuura, Kure City. They’re called Dai-ichi Takechi Maru (第一武智丸) and Dai-ni Takechi Maru (第二武智丸), but in this article, I’ll call them Takechi Maru 1 and 2 respectively.
(more…)I noticed a long time ago that the supermarket near where I live plays ‘Singing In the Rain’ as background music when it’s raining. I assume that it’s some sort of signal to the staff, or it might even be for the customers.
Anyway, I found out today (don’t ask how!) that it’s not just the local supermarket, and in fact that there are a whole range of signals sent by music in supermarkets. I suppose it’s like a non-verbal version of the London Underground’s ‘Inspector Sands’.
Taking Ito-Yokado (a supermarket chain in Japan) as an example, the following tunes mean different things:
– Daydream Believer, by The Monkees, is played when there’s nothing special happening;
– Help!, by The Beatles, can be played by checkout staff to call for extra help on the tills when there are large numbers of customers waiting;
– Carmen, by Georges Bizet, indicates robberies or other crimes in the store;
– And (this is one you never want to hear), Symphony No. 5 (1st Movement), by Beethoven (da-da-da-DUM), indicates a bomb threat!
Finally, there’s one probably targeted at customers rather than staff. Rhythm of the Rain, by The Cascades, informs shoppers that it’s raining.
So, if you’re in a supermarket in Japan, and you hear a rain-related song, you’ll likely need an umbrella when you leave. On the other hand, if you hear Beethoven, it might be a good idea to leave as quickly as you can!
I was on a tram in Hiroshima today. It was a fairly full tram, and just by where I was standing, there was a family: mother, father, and son.
The son was studying math, by the look of it for junior high school entrance exams. Why you would do that on a tram is anyone’s guess, but that’s what he was doing.
Now when Japanese children do maths, they quite often write the math with their finger in the air. Actually, they do that when they’re writing Japanese characters (and practicing English, for that matter) as well.
But what was really quite cute about the situation on the tram was that the young boy was using his father’s back as a sort of slate, or whatever you want to call it, on which to write the equations he was trying to solve.
And the father? Well, he was just taking it all in his stride.
At stations on JR West (and, I think, other JR areas), it’s quite common to see rubbish bins for newspapers and magazines.
Now, given how many people spend all their time on the train using their smartphones (and by extension, not reading newspapers or magazines), I wonder how many people actually use those bins these days. I mean, there must be some, but you just don’t generally see people reading on the train so much these days.
It’s nice that stations still have these bins, but in fact, it’s just harking back to an age that’s basically disappeared now. It’s a shame, really.
If you’ve ever been to a bank or a convenience store in Japan, you might have noticed, tucked away behind the counter but still easily accessible (to the staff, that is), some orange balls. If you look more carefully, you’ll see that they’re actually clear balls filled with some sort of orange liquid. Any idea what they might be?
Well, let me tell you. They’re actually to protect against crimes. They’re called ‘bohan colour balls’ (crime prevention colour balls), but I prefer the alternative (and far more attention-grabbing) ‘crackball’. Whatever the name, the idea is that staff can throw the balls at any criminals who are trying to escape.
Good idea, but it raises one question (actually, several): do the staff actually practice throwing these balls? How do they learn to aim? What if they hit a completely innocent bystander? The whole ‘orange ball’ system just seems very prone to mistakes, let’s put it that way.
I certainly wouldn’t have any confidence that I would be able to hit anyone who’d just stolen something from my shop or, worse still, from my bank… but maybe that’s just me.
Footnote: It appears that people possibly do practice throwing the balls. There’s even a website (unfortunately only in Japanese, but then again, why would it be in any other language?) explaining everything you could ever want to know (and quite possibly more) about how to use the balls.
So, it’s the 6th of July, and, well, I’m here.
Of course you’re there, you might say.
But the 5th of July, yesterday, was supposed to be the day when a huge earthquake hit Japan, accompanied by a huge tsunami, according to a manga artist who was supposed to be able to foretell the future.
Obviously, this time the prediction wasn’t quite successful, because nothing really has happened. Although that’s not to underestimate the continuing earthquakes in the southern part of Japan, in the island chain south of Kagoshima.
But although those earthquakes are significant and no doubt quite unsettling for the inhabitants of those islands. They’re far from a potentially country-destroying level earthquake, which was what was prophesied.
So, well, I’m glad I’m still here, and I’m glad that Japan is still here. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
Koborebanashi 