So I was riding my bike around the other day and exploring places I havn’t been yet when I discovered this strange little road that was paved differently, right down the middle of the road was a stream with bridges across it, and rocks making ponds and waterfalls all the way along it. Photos after the link.
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Archive for the 'Crazy Japanese Sights' Category
Just a giant monkey statue on a roof. Nothing out of the ordinary about that at all. No, I don’t know why it’s there, how it got there, or what it intends to do now that it’s there.
Before I left Sanda, Mayumi and I went through to Kobe to visit Luke at his new job for dinner. After meeting him for dinner, we wandered around Sannomiya for a while before catching the bus home. In one of the big malls in Sannomiya I noticed that one of the posters appeared to have a windows error message on it.
So the other night, I’m sitting in my apartment minding my own business and watching XXX (thought I hadn’t seen it, turns out I had, but it’s always nice to see something in English on TV), when I notice a commotion on the balcony opposite mine. From my lounge I can see right into the entranceway of the apartment building opposite mine, and there were suddenly a lot of people there, some of whom were yelling.
The rice field behind my apartment is now empty. Even the frogs have abandoned it. I left my apartment one day last week, and found the farmer riding along on his little harvester… machine.. thing. I was fascinated, so I stood there for a good fifteen minutes watching him and taking photos. I’m sure it’s quite normal for Japanese people, but I for one have never seen rice growing in a field. Click the link for photos of the harvester, photos of rice, and a video.
Who reading this has ever driven into a pothole in a carpark? You? You in the back? Yeah, lots of people have. Was it the single most devastating and traumatising event of your life? Yeah, I thought so.
Luckily, Japan has come to the rescue, with their brand new, patent pending, pothole avoidance system. No longer do you have to worry about rogue potholes when travelling less than 10km/hr in a car park, not when the car park does this:
Overkill, no?
I was talking with a student the other day about why advertisements in Japan often have foreigners modelling clothes, instead of Japanese people. They told me that it was because Japanese people are short and have round faces, two things I was quick to correct them on, in particular the shortness. I told them that since I’ve been in Japan, I have certainly seen my fair share of short people, really short people. But I have also seen a fair number of tall people, and most Japanese people seem to be only a little shorter than me.
Japan seems to like occupying both ends of any given spectrum. Things either work extremely well here, or they don’t work at all. It’s like the Japanese postal system. I sent a package home, and they told me it would be on the first flight to New Zealand. It arrived a mere two days later. I wanted to send it slower, but either my communication was really bad, or as the lady at the post office told me, they just don’t have a slower postal system. It’s either on the first plane, or it doesn’t get sent.
Another area that Japan seems to have gone for the extremes of is piles of dirt. I found this beauty just down the road on my way to Toys R Us a few weeks ago.
It’s impressive. I had to cross the street to fit it in a photo.
Last Wednesday, Neil and myself went on a journey via Takarazuka and the Hankyu rail line to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi. Nishinomiya is somewhat of a hub as far as the Hankyu is concerned, connecting the Takarazuka line to the Kobe-Osaka line. As such we expected grand things, but upon arriving were disappointed to only find a lackluster mall. It didn’t even have an arcade, and those are everywhere.
However. Being a hub, the train station is very busy. And lots of people get to the train station on bicycles. Which means there are lots of bicycles just sitting around.
Seriously, those images are real. The sun was so bright, and the bikes were so glary that they look out of focus. But they are all bicycles. And they are legion.
I don’t know if I posted about this or not, but a few weeks ago I was trained to teach Chibiko classes, which are the really young children, the two to four year olds. The lessons are comprised mainly of songs and games, and are really active. It’s 40 minutes of non stop action, which the kids may or may not join in with.
Anyway, I went to a place called Okamoto for my training. Because it was a place I had never been to before, I went early so I could walk around and have a bit of an explore. The part of Okamoto I ended up in was three blocks between the Hankyu and JR railway stations. The whole area was small and narrow paved streets with many tiny shops lining them. It was totally different to anywhere I’d been in Japan. Initially I thought Okamoto was pretty cool, but if you wander out of the three block radius you realise it’s just another big city, and the illusion is shattered.
However, Okamoto did have one thing going for it. I was wandering along a street lined with what appeared to be houses, when I noticed this gem standing in someone’s backyard.
Not only does that look like lego, it is lego. Amazing.
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