Things That Make You Go Hmm...

Why would someone living in Roppongi need a truck like this? For the street cred? I mean, you are living in the 23 Wards of Tokyo (a population of roughly 8 million in the wards alone), and the "country" is a good few hours away. Do you move a lot of friends in the city?

Welcome to my neighborhood. This is looking down the main street leaving Takanodai, my local train station, at 6 am on Sunday. Japan definitely lives up to it's nickname "land of the rising sun"; the sun rises around 4:00 am here so the birds are definitely up when you wrap up your night on first train.

Lastly, I hope I don't have any more roommates this summer! This is a cockroach that I found in running across my kitchenette. Although most Japanese people seem to dislike cockroaches just as much as me, they seem far more tolerant of them. Although my coworkers screamed when I brought them my cockroach in a sealed jar, they seemed a bit shocked when I suggested we call the building management and see about professional pest control. Instead, they suggested I go to the store to buy some DIY pest control. At the grocery store last night, it turns out that they have a large display of cockroach sprays, traps, and poisons prominently displayed in the entrance. To the Japanese, cockroaches just seem to be another part of life.