A Few Simple Reasons

There are several little things that make life in Japan lovely. Here are just a few:

1. Sometimes, the English translations on signs and packagings are so strange that they read like poetry.

A sign on the Utsunomiya Line train.

The glare sort of interfered with this one, but it says, "I threw my cigarette butt in the drain. That is to say, I hid it in the drain."

2. The children are always excited to meet me.

I didn't know which teacher's room to go to, so I just went to the teachers' room.

3. It forces me to be creative.

Our own desperate version of Girl Scouts' Thin Mints: one Mentos (or Mento, as Jennifer put it, in the singular) between two squares of Meiji chocolate. Yum.