The exciting on-goings going on in Sumiyoshi!

Sumiyoshi is the part of Osaka where I live. In Japanese, it's called a ku (区) which translated into some antiquated term like ward in English. This is the street between my home and the supermarket which you may remember from the "Streetlamps" episode. Anyway, this time I was going out, I saw some cab driver peeing against one of the posts, and I was pretty surprised. This seems to me more likely to happen in Osaka then Tokyo, but I'm not sure.

Oh, so here is the whale they sell at the supermarket. I wonder if they got it from the aquarium. Yum! Blubber!

So, shortly after the peeing episode, I was off to get bread early in the morning and I saw a brawl in the streets. Well, it was more like a one-sided fight. Some no-collar-looking workers were gathered around, and it looked like Peon No-Collar had done something unacceptable as Chief No-Collar was knocking him around and giving him a good yelling. From my experience, there is more violence in Japan than in the U.S., possibly putting it on par with Canada. A couple days later, I saw another fight at a gas station (in another ward) coming back from tennis one evening, and when I was in Tokyo there was a fight in Shinjuku at 2pm! (They even have a section titled "Violence" at the video store! More on this in a later post.) My tennis friend said fights were more common because of all the stress, though they are less dangerous in the US. Apparently fights happen in the business world to---employees at his company got in a fight too and the company had to hush it up.

By the way, the toilet paper here has no cardboard in the middle! (At least some kinds.) So you can use it all the way to the end! How eco-friendly. Though in practice the inner layers are basically glued together, and at the end of the roll, I'm just ripping the paper into shreds and throwing it out.

I was looking for some ginger ale one day, and my options were to get the elite snooty Canada Dry brand for $1 or the down to earth "from USA" brand for 40 cents.

Looking on the back, it indeed says it's from the USA, but I don't believe it. First, there are no specifics, second there's no US brand, third, it doesn't taste like any ginger ale I've ever had. It was much stronger, more like a weak ginger beer. And it wasn't that great, as all things from the USA naturally are. The other "from USA" brand soda was entitled Cola. I will perhaps contain my curiosity.

By the way, my bathroom has this panel where I can set what appears to be the temperature of the hot water heater and the volume. I thought this was a great idea, you can just set it to your favorite temperature and jump in the shower or tub. However, at least in the summer, no matter what temperature I set it at, it doesn't seem any different, and whenever I am adjusting the hot and cold knobs in the shower, I can only get either scolding hot or luke cold. Maybe the same guy who designed the no-cardboard toilet paper designed a psycho-somatic water temperature control panel. Incidentally, you may notice two buttons on the left. The bottom one is red and looks like a "call" button. I thought, I wonder what this does, so I pushed it. Then what sounded like an alarm went off outside. I was afraid some firemen or rescue workers or somebody was going to come rushing to my room in 10-30 minutes, but it didn't happen. Maybe if you press it between 9am and 5pm, maintenance will come to check on you.

There's another one of these panels by my kitchen sink. I think I had something planned to say about this but I forget.

I got this flyer in the mail, that says "This Japanese lesson is special designed for people who have fundamental knowledge of Japanese and for beginner." But apparently not for people who have any respect for English grammar. You would think that the speech bubbles are meant to convince you that the instructor(s) are fluent in your language, but the Korean and Chinese are even worse. I don't understand them at all! Anyway, it is nice that there are several free Japanese classes for foreigners in Japan. When I started looking around for lessons though, I couldn't find of the free classes any that were at a good time and nearby for me.

I got lost one day, and ended up outside of Sumiyoshi, oh no! In Suminoe, the next ku. But I did find this pretty nice fountain.

The surrounding area is not so pretty however.

So in Japan, lots of people don't use beds, just futons, and you're supposed to regularly wash and/or beat them and hang them in the sun. I hear that a lot of people who come over to teach English on the JET program don't do that and there futons get moldy or something gross. I have a bed and a futon, but I'm not allowed to hang either of them outside.

There are some really annoying trucks that drive around with loud announcements trying to sell things, or sometimes just give them away. This one was selling old electronics equipment. I'm glad we don't have this culture in the US.

There are several little garden areas around the neighborhood, which I have the impression that private individuals uses, though I'm not sure how the system works.

Hey, this is a seasonal one I saw at my grocery store. I think the 2008 Fall one might be up already so I should go check. This is a pretty good collection. I like the one on the bottom right for it's philosophical aesthetics and poignancy. Can you figure out the second from the top on the right? I couldn't.

Somebody asked me how you type in Japanese. Here's a Japanese keyboard. It looks a lot like a normal one, only many of the keys have a character from the Japanese phonetic alphabet on also, so presumably you can enter Japanese with some sort of "Japanese caps lock," though I use a different system to type in Japanese. I'm not sure which system is more common in Japan though.

Hey, this place I went for lunch in Namba has no smoking times! (That's "no-smoking times", not "no smoking-times".)

This is what I had, which was alright. I might add that this seems to be a discounted 本日のおすすめ（Today's Special) every single day of the year. It was like that Vietnamese place, which might have been a Baale, in Honolulu which had Seafood Chow Fun in Black Bean Sauce as a "Today's Special" every day for three years. Then it suddenly disappeared. I was heartbroken. Oh, how I regret all those days I ordered something else!