Japanoramic: Grocery Carts, Cherry Blossoms, and Trainicide

On the day the Bastille fell, Louis XVI wrote "Rien" (nothing) in his journal. It's used as the ultimate example of his cloistered life and general clueless nature, but as I am faced with a mountain of halfway done posts about Japan, none of which I have posted, I wonder if sometimes we say "Nothing" when all the somethings are just too big to explain. I can picture the King thinking "Well, so there's this thing that happened, caused by this other thing that's not really my fault, but combined with THIS thing that IS kind of my fault...oh to hell with this, I'm going to bed."

When we arrived, everything, and I mean every single thing, was different and strange and (mostly) wonderful. Now that feeling of "other" is starting to fade and I find myself desperate to record the commonplace things that are different before I forget that they ARE different.

Like this. How genius is this?!?!

Flora and our neighbor's baby (who is three days older than Flora!) at a local grocery store. Turtle/Crane, if you're local and interested!

 The babies are more comfy in an actual seat and they're much safer. If the worst should happen, which would be baby taking a tumble out of the seat, they're so much closer to the ground that it's immediately just an "ouch" moment instead of an ER trip.


And this. Cherry blossom time.It happens every year, but oh, I hope it never ceases to amaze me.  The Japanese have parties called hanami every year where they picnic and view the blossoms. I love it that an entire nation celebrates...trees. How ridiculously great is that?!?! The equivalent would be if Americans had tailgates every fall for the foliage instead of football. Not that I'm knocking football...perish the thought...but it would be cool to do both, am I right?




Of course not everything that is "ordinary" is good. Like this.

This I actually took off a Google search, but this is our train line coincidentally. Or not, since the locals call the Chuo line the "Chuicide" line.

I have seen this notice every single time that I ride the train, and it's a euphemism for suicide. Suicide by train is very common here, unthinkably so to a Western mind. It occurs between three to five times a day on average, with rates being much higher near the holidays, during the rainy season, and near student exam times. Yes, you are reading that correctly: every.single.day.

It is not discussed at all, for two reasons. First, because it IS so common. Second, because it's believed that drawing attention to it encourages others to emulate the suicides. I have never actually seen someone do it, thank God, but if you take the train often enough, it is inevitable to see a body in a bag being carried out of a station, or worse still, to see the platform jump.

Sometimes I feel like I "get" Japan and then something will happen that flips my understanding upside down in an instant: an ingenious modification to a simple thing, something so beautiful that it makes me cry, and something so horrible that I don't even know how to deal with it. 

Sometimes all you can say is...nothing.