It's important to have a life vision, and when it comes to garbage receptacles that's one thing you don't want to be expressing witty remarks about.

Let's also be clear that yes we can resist the temptation to attempt to make some clever comments about the colour of the said receptacle.

In unrelated news, I have been fiddling with the awesome software which powers this blog and by adding the facility to remember the name, URL etc. entered on the comment forms, I have dragged it kicking and screaming into the latter half of the first decade of the 20th century. May your comment posting be herewith marginally less cumbersome.

On my monthly muesli run to Donki earlier today^[*], I tried out a new route and was suprised to come across a branch of Tesco much closer to home than I was previously aware of. Fully expecting to be disappointed, I nevertheless went in to have a look around on the off-chance they were having a Pork Pie Matsuri or something, and I was as disappointed as I had expected to be. At least as far as the inventory went.

Now, differentiating between "L" and "R" is a perennial problem in these parts and if I had a yen for every such mistake I see, I'd be able to launch my own personal stimulus package.

However, I would expect that a nominally British operation would be able to correctly label the section of cold cabinets containing products made from the stuff squeezed out of cow tits.

^[*] Apologies if that sentence part doesn't make sense to you, try living in Japan to know what I'm wittering on about

By its nature the Japanese language lends itself to clever wordplay, and also excruciatingly bad puns, and the nation's marketing gurus are not afraid to make use of this characteristic with a vigour which is as enthusiastic as it is forehead-slappingly facile. Or extremely clever. Depending on your point of view.

Such as on this poster advertising coffee beverages sold in round metallic containers:

Bonus points are awarded for involving the English language.

Probably even non-Japanese speakers who are familiar with recent events in US politics could have a game stab at pronouncing the single Sino-Japanese character in this particular advertising slogan, which does in fact carry the meaning of a tubular liquid enclosure and not of a modal auxiliary verb indicating ability or potential.

Yes, it did snow last night (or more precisely in the early hours of this morning) but it vanished pretty quickly.

Night train. 

It's incredible to think that it's been six months since I wrote that it has been six months since I made landfall on Japan's tetrapod-lined shores. Time flies when one is having fun, doing battle with the local fauna etc. etc. Unfortunately too busy to wax lyrical right now, but life has certainly got a lot more interesting.

And at least it isn't snowing (yet).

One of the many limitations of this blog, apart from the general lack of content, readers etc., is that photographs are constrained by the layout to a maximum width of 400 pixels, which is not enough to do justice to the stunning depth of detail and clarity provided by my consumer-grade digital cameras. It has long been on my todo list to remedy this and having just taken delivery of a fresh batch of round tuits I hereby make it known that clicking on most photographs will produce a larger version embedded in a stylish, fashionable popup for your viewing pleasure.

Try it for yourself on this gratuitous image of Himeji Castle from last October:

Dear Shinohara Rikuun,

Congratulations - not only have you plastered a non-existent English word on the side of your truck, you have also spelt it incorrectly. Presumably because you couldn't find it in a dictionary. It's certainly in none of mine.

I know it says on your website "限りない挑戦" ("Challenge without limits"), but sometimes you just gotta bow to the inevitable and find many happiness in your daily life without overstretching your linguistic resources.

Admittedly you will find the word on Google, but the first entry is from the mindbogglingly authoritative Urban Dictionary, and of the nine other entries on the first page, five are somehow Japan-related and of the others, two represent touchy-feely arty-farty type websites. Hardly a sign of a word in common circulation in the English-speaking world, I submit.

Actually, let's see what happens if we enter the word into the Heartful Dictionary, the number two result in Google provided by that hotbed of linguistic research, the Toyohashi University of Technology:

Well, as they say around here, "the twitterings of a lark catching my ear with pleasant sound".