Things I Will Miss About Japan

[rachelmanija]

1. Hot canned coffee. Especially Suntory Boss latte (The Boss of Them All Since 1994.)

2. Vending machines providing stuff I actually want.

3. Convenience stores selling quite good food. Why can't we have Japan's 7-11 rather than our own purveyor of revolting foods?

4. Onigiri in convenience stores. Bentos in convenience stores. Desserts I enjoy eating in convenience stores.

5. Trains.

6. Subways.

7. Department stores. Especially, department store basements.

Things Cari Will Miss:

1. Calbee green pea sticks.

2. Kotatsu. (Tables with a blanket draped over and a heat source. You stick your feet under it.) When we were at Koya-san, she practically moved into ours.)

Things I Will Not Miss.

1. Public bathrooms in which the "privacy wall" totally fails to conceal men peeing. Yecch.

2. Missing my kitties.

3. Very hard futons.

4. Faux-roni, faux-rice, and faux-pebble pillows.

It is our last day. We will miss the sakura by two days. Alas.

Comments

[anotherslashfan]

Oh yes, I totally miss the convenience stores and their onigiri, too. *sigh*

[marycontrary]

I remember Himeji as having the earliest blooming cherries I saw, and it's also the most awesome castle in Japan. You might look in to it.

[larryhammer]

I suspect that if I lived in Japan through a winter, I would become a kotatsu person.

(My favorite episode of Kamichu! is the one where the eponymous middle-school goddess spends the entire episode ensconced under the kotatsu. This strikes me as a very sensible way to spend winter vacation.)

---L.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Is Tommy Lee Jones still the real live Coffee Boss? He was on some of the machines when I was there. It was perfect.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

7. Department stores. Especially, department store basements.

What are the department store basements like? About all I can remember reading about Japanese department stores is in one of Calvin Trillin's essays, about the food samples. ("A person could have lunch here." "I think you just did.")

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

We buy six-packs of canned coffee from an import grocery store. One can left under a running hot water tap for about a minute, then rolled down a book to a groggy person lying around in bed, quite convincingly replicates the hot can of coffee from the vending machine in the morning experience.

Just noting.

[slrose.livejournal.com]

I get Calbee Snap pea crisps here in the US. At first I had to go to Trader Joe's, but now my grocery store carries them. http://www.calbeeamerica.com/calbee-snacks-snapea-crisps.html