The bird that never was

Some months ago while at an unfamiliar Tokyo subway station, I was startled to hear the clear sound of a cheerfully twittering bird. Here, 30 meters underground, in the all steel-and-concrete bowels of the Tokyo Metro? It seemed that some birds aren’t very picky with places to nest.

After listening for a while, though, I eventually realised that it just was a recording of a bird call playing at 10 second intervals. At the time, i dismissed it as a futile attempt to humanize the sterile steel and concrete environment of the Tokyo Metro, to cheer up exhausted, overworked salary men during the crush of rush hour. Somehow, I don’t think a bird call is going to do it.

Tonight, however, I finally got the crucial clue to solve the mystery. The loudspeaker making the bird noises is mounted at the base of the platform’s exit staircase. Looking closer showed a small symbol of a man with a white cane.

In other words, blind people can follow the bird call to navigate their way out of the dense maze of the subway. Better yet, it does it in a way that’s unobtrusive and even pleasant for other passengers. Fantastic design.

In a cafe in Nikko

When you’ve got a Japan-related blog, one of the biggest temptations is to fill it with what I’ll politely call “fashion English”, but which is more commonly known by another term.  Three reasons to avoid that, really:

1. After seeing excessive numbers of grammatically correct but indefinably strange English on T-shirts every single day, it takes a particularly outrageous example to even raise an eyebrow now.
2. At least people here have the sense to display odd, exotic languages on T-shirts rather than emblazoning them on their bodies indelibly.
3. I am acutely aware that my Japanese must sound at least as strange as these shirts in ways I cannot even begin to fathom.

Well, I’m cashing in one of my free spins here. These were in the lunchtime menu of a small cafe in Nikko, and for some reason I found them very charming. Perhaps it’s because I can imagine the cafe owner’s 10-year old niece taking to a sunny piece of floor one autumn afternoon, a stack of A4 paper before her, felt-tip pens scattered all around her, brow furrowed in concentration as she draws deeply upon the English she’d been eagerly learning at school, emerging 4 hours later to proudly show off the results of her labours.

Or maybe they’re mass-produced by the Mitsubishi Printing Company and every regional cafe throughout Japan has them.  I’m not sure which it is.

Hey, who wants candy?

Last weekend I went to Nikko, a historical area about two hours away from Tokyo. It was a great chance to road test my new Sony Alpha-300 (finally, a flip screen on a DSLR). Hopefully I can upload some of those photos soon, but before I do that, there’s one particular photo I just can’t get past.

A widespread Japanese tradition is omiyage, or souvenirs, very often in the form of food. You’d normally be expected to buy these for your co-workers and friends whenever you go away on a trip. Omiyage are often specialised to each region, playing off famous sights or local delicacies.

One of the most famous sights in Nikko are the “3 monkeys“. They’re actually not too big in person, perched just above a doorway:

So, to play off that while preserving the air of grandeur and history of the area, a local specialty would be:

…faux monkey poo. The label reads “saru no unpii”. “Saru” means monkey, “no” is like apostrophe s, but I couldn’t find “unpii” in any of my dictionaries. When you put it into the mighty Google though, you’ll be treated to lots of lovely pictures of cat… “leavings”.

But here I am explaining when… well, just look at it. Truly, graphic representations of animal digestive tracts are the international language.