Surviving Japan

SURVIVING JAPAN

May 2 Tuesday

Greetings from Japan, the land of exploding groceries and holes in the human brain.

I was near the checkout counter the other day when there was a kind of prolonged hiss and a roar followed by what sounded like a small explosion, then someone threw up the lid of a metal box and we saw smoke inside, some of which wreathed out into the larger world.

And I thought "What the hell is that?"

Then I figured the white stuff must be dry ice, and that this was the modern high-tech replacement for the decorous little bags of dry ice which you would often be offered at the checkout counter on hot days.

My next age of terror moment was at the Royal Host family restaurant chain where I thought about the hamburger then thought about BSE and holes in the brain. Then I turned to the back of the menu and saw that they specified where all their meat came from. In the case of hamburger meat, Austrlia. (McDonald's in Japan follows a similar stragegy.)

Murasaki and I went to the ward office, the local government office, and did four pieces of bureaucratic business. Which took a couple of hours.

Cornucopia will now not be back at day care again until Monday.

We also talked today about me possibly seeing an eye specialist at a local clinic at the place where we live.