Crows

Regular readers of mine will know my fascination with Cardiff seagulls. Angry, aggressive birds, the size of small cows, they will swoop down and steal your bag of chips as soon as look at you. They strut around the streets of Cardiff, scavenging for food, feeding on anything from the remains of a baby’s diaper to the contents of the polystyrene food container that has been discarded on the road side. And if there’s nothing else to eat, they will tear apart the polystyrene and scoff that. I thought coming to Japan would free me from my fair-feathered fears, but Yokohama has its own avian threat. Let me introduce you to the Japanese Crow. 

I think I hate crows more than I hate seagulls.  Their beaks look like scimitars, their feet dangle unnervingly, while their caw is the very essence of death. They too strut around like they are the real rulers of the earth. They too will eat anything that we humans have left behind and they too will tear plastic bags asunder to reach their dinner. Like the Cardiff seagull, there seems to be an obesity crisis with the Japanese crow population. Their diet of human detritus has made them unfeasibly big and surely at threat of heart attack or diabetes. 

Both species have grown utterly reliant on the human being for their survival. Without us discarding our uneaten burgers, battered sausages and buns, they would surely starve to death. Or maybe not, maybe a future world, when humans have wiped themselves out, will be taken over by one of these flying forces. Will the crows outwit the gulls or will the gulls out muscle the crows? Whatever, a future feathered fight will be ferocious, fierce and fatal.

Vending Machines

Before I came to Japan I had the vague idea that it was the vending machine capital of the world. I was led to believe that I could walk along the street and do all my grocery shopping, buy my beer, my t-shirts, get a hot meal, and a shot of sake and if I were that way inclined buy my cigarettes from the copious amount of vending machines dotted along every Japanese pavement. I was even told there was specialist machines forgentlemenwho might want to buy schoolgirl underwear!!!!

And there are plenty of machines on show. For example, in the 100 metres or so from my house I counted 8 machines. But don’t get excited. I am not buying the new iPhone XS, fresh eggs or some slightly disturbing kinky product from the roadside dispensers. The only thing they sell is drinks. Not even alcoholic drinks, just the deliciously named Pocari Sweat, seventeen types of green tea and over-priced coke. There’s not even any dandelion and burdock or Apple Tizer.  I feel like I have been short-changed although let me assure you the machines always give the correct change, unlike the old Nestle machine on Cardiff Central platform 7, that took your money but never released the draws. 

Apparently, all the vending machines mention above do exist, but they are hidden away, only revealed when the air quality is right. Much like this guy. 

So if you are coming to Japan expecting vending machine heaven, you won’t find it unless you really go hunting.  

Bridges

When you are told that a bridge is one of the 100 top bridges in the region, your interested is piqued. You imagine a fine stone construction a la Charles Bridge in Prague  or maybe a swinging rope footbridge or some kind of suspension bridge or one of them lifts-uppy type bridges like Tower Bridge. When you are told that you have already crossed the bridge, you wonder to yourself, how did I miss that? Was I looking at my phone again when I crossed it. What a fool I am? I hurriedly retraced my steps, looking for this magnificent structure. But there was no wonderful erection to be found, just a small, slightly disappointing crossing. How bad must the other bridges in Kanagawa be, if this pathetic little thing had made the top 100? But then I looked up, looked left, looked right and realised that sometimes it is not the thing itself that creates the beauty, but the environment it is in. 

In the top 100!

Nothing special.

I know I haven't been coy about my time in Japan  

but I do promise to stop carping on about it.

Like getting on a crowded train backwards

Japanese commuter trains are a thing of beauty. They are so regimented. They run regularly and like clockwork. They stop in exact places on the platform to allow commuters, who have been standing in orderly queues, to push and barge and cram their way into already overpacked carriages. Have you ever seen those cat videos on Facebook, where cats twist and distort their bodies to fit into impossible spaces, well, cats learnt that skill by watching Japanese commuters.

But I’ve noticed one trick that really stands out. 

People walk backwards to get on crowded trains. 

To start with, I couldn’t work out what they were doing. Why get on a train backwards?

But I realised it is the ones getting on backwards that do the most damage. They will push and shove, scatter the other commuters like skittles, but never once do they look around and see the carnage they have caused behind them. It is as if entering backwards absolves them of all responsibility, allowing them to maintain the image of politeness. It’s like they are burying their head in sand, like blocking their own ears when stealing a bell, fiddling while Rome burns or the new idiom I am trying to coin, Like getting on a crowded train backwards. So come on, start using it. Let’s get this new idiom in the Oxford Dictionary. (Other dictionaries are available.)

P.S. I don't have a picture of a train so here's one of Fuji.