APR 5, Japan visit: inscrutable signs of Japan

 

the Japanese inverted triangle stop sign

Such non-universal traffic signs (recently some display English translation) among others, have been in place since 1963. Inspired by increasing international tourism, including Olympic games, the National Police Agency slated the stop-signs for replacement by a bilingual version of the universal octagonal red sign; the total cost nationally was estimated at 25 billion yen, or 200 million US$.

remember to flip your card!

 for disposing of used food-wrappers from lunch
at an upscale Nagoya lunch self-serve

archaic font for an ultra-modern bus

It was inevitable that high-tech toilets with a bidet function, found very widely in modern Japan, would come up for discussion. The operation and instructions vary from model to model, but are always imposing. Here, the customer seems to be advised to not wash while his/her lamplight (?) is turned on.

CLASSIC JAPANESE HAIKU, in translation

everything I touch

with tenderness, alas,

pricks like a bramble.

Kobayashi Issa

TODAY'S POEM (senryu *) 

hearing crabs scurry,

a perched old grackle cries out  

as I reach the marsh.

Giorgio Coniglio. 

* learn more HERE about senryu, a lesser-known Japanese short poem that shares the physical characteristics of haiku (nominally 17 'on' / syllables in three non-rhyming lines), but deals in a satiric or humorous way with human foibles rather than with Nature. 

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