Voice of Will: Wandering Tokyo & Intelligent Design

Tuesday, September 26, 2006
intelligent design and wandering tokyo
Current mood: bouncy

So for all of those out there with intelligent design theories, I have one for you.
Whenever you go to the bathroom in japan, you will notice there is a little pipe sticking up out of the top of the toilet. Now it is up on top of the toilet tank, so it is not a bedux (a pottie that squirts you back). So what is it? well when you have finished your business and you flush the toilet, water starts flowing out of this pipe, and down a hole in the top of the toilet tank. So they have designed a way to wash your hands using the water that fills the tank fresh from the pipes. That way you don't have to actually use the sink. Now that is intelligent design for you! Very efficient.

So we have been here about 2 weeks now, and are coming to grips with lots of things. Like traffic is on the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. Why do the Japanese us the british system? I am so used to looking left, then right , then left when crossing the road, i have almost been hit like 3x. And all because I don't look right 2x. We conquered Japan. The US. We insisted that their emperor was a mortal man, and made him admit that to the japanese. We gave them baseball (and that is pretty awesome, more on that in a different post), baseketball, pro wrestling (not sumo, I mean like fake moves, bad soap opera drama, WWF hulk hogan stuff), and a love for hamburgers, but we couldn't get them to drive on the right side of the road? WTF?
Sticker shock is definately wearing off. I just have to get used to the idea that I'm buying american stuff in america. Not China. (too bad that would make this perfect). DVD:s from the states are like 3200 yen. (that is like 30 bucks). We have found the local DVD rental place, and we will be friends. (and when I go to china over winter break, i:m bringing back like a suitcase full of DVD:s and PS2 /xbox games)

japanese tv is hypnotic. More so than barney and the teletubbies. Their kids shows are interesting, full of bright colors, and easy to understand even in a foreign language. Why doesn:t china have that? The kids are dying to learn japanese. We have learned 25 or so of the hiragana (japanse alphabet) and know about 50 words by sight now. I can only count to 6, but the kids are rattling off japanese numbers fast. It took me about 4 months to learn 1 to 10 in chinese. But there is no haggling at stores, so I guess the numbers aren:t that important. Everyone is so helpful.

We have a tropical depression hitting the coast right now, so it is raining, and will be for the next 3 days. But that doesn't even slow anything down.

We were here for 4 days and then asked to participate in some sort of kids day parade. One of our neighbors walked over and told us in perfect english there was some sort of kids day festival. So we took the kids, and were asked to participate in the parade. It consisted of young kids towing a shinto drum around the block with a shinto priest banging the drum, and adults carrying some sort of parade float on their backs and it looked like some sort of wooden structure that was topped with a brass phoenix looking bird and a carp. I have no idea what they were, but we were in a parade!

One of the other interesting things about tokyo is that unlike china, we are not an exhibit in a zoo. We have some people look at us, but for the most part, they say "hello" and then wander off. I:m amazed. the people are so helpful.