Golden Week

Food courts in Japanese malls
In America you would never be able to use real dishes in a foodcourt, where people have to bus their one tables. Dishes would go missing, they would be carelessly left on tables, it would be a mess. In Japan however, not only does each food station have different dishes, some even give you hot plates. You take your food to your table, eat it, throw the garbage away and take the tray with the dirty dishes back to the return area at the given station's station. It amazes me how smoothly this operates. In addition there's the issue of the garbage cans, which I don't think I've ever written about. Most garbage areas whether you're at home, at TIU, at the eki or the conbini (convenience store) (and the latter 3 places are really the only places I've seen trash cans in public) you'll find yourself in front of 3 cans: P.E.T. (plastic) bottles, cans and combustibles. At home, it's just plastic and combustibles, I don't know where cans go... Anyway, you'll very very rarely find just a single trash can.

Major ironic fact about Japan #2 (#1 was the train suicides): There are no trash cans ANYWHERE except the places stated above yet there is no litter. It blows my mind. I often find myself stuffing trash in bag and waiting until I pass a conbini, because I know there won't be a trash can anytime soon. I think the major difference is that here it's considered rude to eat while you are walking, so there are less people eating McDonald's while walking to school and throwing their trash on your lawn (that's for you Burroughs High School students, we really appreciate it). If you don't have trash, you won't have anything to litter with...

Major ironic fact about Japan #3: Japan is home to the most innovative, most over-the-top toilets YET at least half of the bathrooms will have a western style toilet and a traditional, smelly, dirty, gross, hurts your knees hole-in-the-ground toilet. I don't understand. And it's not like people always choose the western style first either, there are people out there who prefer squatting. Granted not all wester toilets have heated seats and different functions, some are as plain as in the US, but still.... you're not doing your business in a hole in the ground... And they ALWAYS smell, even if it looks clean, it's going to smell terrible, guaranteed . This isn't just in little restaurants or the like either, this in the lobby of a pretty nice hotel, or a pretty new shopping center. Blows my mind.

Golden Week:
Urawa Reds Soccer game: Awesome. The game was great, our seats were great, even though they were the nosebleeds I still felt close. Ryu's senpai from his club team, a 17 year old, number 24, played which was cool. I bought a sweet Abe shirt in youth large so it was cheaper, and a fake Torres jersey outside for $10. Reds scored in stoppage time in the second half to win the game. Legit. I can't wait until the next one.

Yokohama Matsuri: Spent a ridiculous amount of time and money getting to Yokohama, only to get lost and miss all the fun things at the festival, yet got to enjoy the crowds.... But I ate some good food, enjoyed the slightly humid, breezy weather, saw the water, and admired the second largest city in Japan.
Sidenote: On the train from Tokyo to Yokohama we saw this guy on the train wearing a nice suit and carrying a heavy duty silver, locked briefcase. He was holding onto the overhead handles and we noticed the edge of tattoos showing from under his shirt sleeves, which probably
means his entire body was covered, thus Yakuza. We had our resident Yakuza expert (my friend Matt has done a few research projects on the Yakuza) with us, who informed us that the entire body was covered except a center line. The tattoos are meant to represent armor, because when the Yakuza started in the Tokugawa era, they were ronin (masterless samurai) who banned together to protect peasants. Fascinating. The real question is though, what was in his briefcase?