Your Rice Tastes Yuk – Things Written On Shampoo Bottles – MicroGraveyards – More Things in Restrooms
Your Rice Tastes Yuk
Japan has a policy of rice self-sufficiency while at the same time subsidising growers using those tiny little rice paddies. Domestic rice therefore costs more than industrially-produced imported rice, and the fix for this is to convince consumers that domestic rice tastes better.
Which might explain the somewhat unexpected offer of three comparative local varieties of rice (all plain white rice btw) at breakfast the other day. Rice is served cooked in a big container with a large scoop to take about 4oz/100g at a time. Or, one restaurant, there was a rice machine which opened up its ball-shaped dispenser to plop a big soggy ball of lukewarm rice into your outstretched bowl placed underneath. Unappetising to us Western hot-food-obsessives.
Breakfast tends to be the time of day when travellers find they long for home food, although in fact the bountiful offerings of raw and pickled sea creatures are not getting a very enthusiastic reception from our rally crews at any time.
Not even, and Sid and Doris are pretty determined snack-eaters, at snack time. Maybe this is a simple marketing problem, and labels such as “(Sea) Monster Munch” would get a warmer western reception?
Things Written On Shampoo Bottles
Sid was very pleased to see his own shampoo and conditioner the other day: “at last – shampoo for people who don’t have hair!”
Meanwhile a larger bottle of Hajimari’s shampoo says “Hajimari will support your day to be PLEASANT”.
Which sounds like they had a whirly wheel of different daily outcomes (lucky, fruitful, fortunate etc) of which the lowest outcome was… let’s see where the whirly wheel slows down and… stops… Pleasant! Rather like the UK goverment inspectorate grading of schools, where grade 2 was a miserly “Good”. Sid and Doris support your day to be better than GOOD, by the way.
MicroGraveyards
I am struggling to get a good picture of these from the car, but a graveyard does not need to be big and does not need to be attached to a place of worship. These look like very intimate family spaces, a huge contrast to some of the large graveyards we’ve seen in the UK and the US – they are also monuments to cremated remains rather than buried bodies.
More Things In Restrooms
This one is great in so many ways. It is called a Changing Platform. Firstly, you need to understand that outside floors are Dirty, and toilet floors are Extremely Dirty. So to have reached this indoor toilet you should already have changed shoes twice, from outdoor shoes to indoor slippers and then from indoor slippers to toilet slippers. But suppose that you have gone to the toilet in order to use the privacy of the cubicle to change your clothes? What will you stand on to do that? Enter the CHANGING PLATFORM.
Instructions are provided. Sadly step 2b “change clothes” is not included, giving the impression that the changing board magically transforms you into something else, rather like Mr Benn’s changing room.
