japan is weird

unless you've been living under a rock for decades, you might know that they do things differently in japan. today i was in asakusa with my host family and a finnish exchange student doing the temple and shrine thing. there was a woman riding her bike with her baby sitting in a chair on the back, and she hit the curb on the wrong angle and fell over. naturally, she was wild with worry about the baby and a lot of people came over to help. but the thing that caught my interest was when we moved on and later on came back down the same street. 3 policemen had arrived on the scene, and they had traced an outline of the bike, like a homicide crime scene (?). they also had a measuring tape and were measuring the distance from the perfect outline of the bike and the nearest pole (?).

there are tons of small police 'boxes' around the streets of japan. usually theres 4 or 5 cops in them. the average cop here serves his country more often than not by directing tourists to the nearest temple, collecting bikes parked in the wrong places, and even bringing back trolleys from the shopping center parking lots.

oh, and another thing - on a variety tv program the other night a chef had a live octopus and proceeded to cut all the tentacles off and chop them up. the tentacles were still moving when all the hosts of the program dipped them in sauce and ate them. it wasn't a challenge for money or anything, in fact it was a treat for the hosts and they loved it.