Not a dryer

When I was in Stockholm, I saw this thing in a public bathroom. It says "tork". In Swedish, this means "dryer". It can be used for things that dry your hands, or for things that dry clothes or bigger things.

This was located next to a sink for people to wash their hands, so you might expect it to be something that dries your hands. It was, however, not. It was a soap dispenser.

It turns out that Tork is a company (not Swedish) that makes, among other things, soap dispensers.

Things you may see in Stockholm

People actually fish in front of the government building (across the street from the castle)

Here are some random photos I took in Stockholm.

Dead rat

Houdini clothes. Impossible to get out of?

There is a game for young people called "Ryska posten", but this seemed to be real delivery company.

This shirt says: "Everything is your fault". Which is funny so I bought one.

Life sized Iron Man and Captain America in front of a toy store

Sign design

I passed a business called Flick, but from a distance the font they chose for the L and I was not that great.

Suspicious toilet sign

I am not sure this is how I want other people to use toilets in buildings where I also use the toilets...

"Let's shoot!" school poster

I saw this poster on one of the university bulletin boards. It shows lots of people, and one of them holds a rifle and says "Ah yes, let's shoot!".

I think it is from the sports shooting club at the university, and the message is that they want you to join the club. But it kind of looks like they suggest having a school shooting spree.

New Yoke cup cakes?

I passed a huge sign that had a photo of something that said "New Yoke cup cake". I asked my Japanese friend if this was some kind of joke that I just did not get or if it was just a misspelling ("York" sounds like it would be written almost like "yoke" in Japanese). She thought it was just a mistake. A very expensive looking sign to not check your spelling in.

Honshu style Hanami

On my last day in Saitama, everyone else was doing hanami. I had to catch a train at two in the afternoon to be in time for my plane back to Sapporo, so I could not participate very much. I did get to see a little of how they do hanami in mainland Japan.

The trees where not in bloom yet. The TV prognosis said that it would be three more days before full bloom in this area.

As previously mentioned, in Sapporo hanami means barbecue. In Honshu it means buying cold food or bringing food from home and having a picnic. This is nice too, of course. We stopped by a supermarket and bought lots of food and alcohol, and then took a train to a park with lots of cherry trees.  I ate some of the food, which was good, and then got on a train to the airport before most of the participants had even arrived. I did see some of them in the train station, though.

The sign says: "Warning: watch out for perverts"

You can see the park from the train station, and you can even see my sister-in-law in the park in this photo.

Take a selfie here

I saw a sign that said you should take a selfie there. So I did.

Eat rice, drink tea, stay healthy

There was a place that served sushi and other Asian food that had huge signs saying: "Eat rice. Drink tea. Slurp noodles. Stay healthy".

Funny signs in Las Vegas

There were lots of funny signs in Las Vegas. I especially liked the homeless (?) guy who had a sign that said that his girlfriend had been kidnapped by ninjas, so he needs money to learn kung-fu.

Shoot a real machine gun, very American. I shot machine guns when I was in the army in Sweden, so I was not very interested, though.

This looked very real

There was a huge sign saying: "If it is in stock, we have it" but it was difficult to get a good photo from the taxi.

People I know

I passed by a sign with information about many different bars in many different buildings. It so happened that two bars from two different buildings both featured people that I know.

"L'Oro Rosso" looks like an encoding error when written in Japanese: ロロロッソ

Yesterday we passed a place called "L'oro rosso". This is written as "ロロロッソ" in Japanese. Since the first three letters are just squares, it looks like you have a font encoding problem.

The place was small, and quite nice. We had some good wine, and some heated strawberries with cheese.

Sasebo Burger, good enough to travel from Australia to eat?

There is a show on Japanese TV called ”Why did you come to Japan?".  I don't have a TV so I have never seen this show, but many of my friends, both Japanese and foreign, watch the show. They look for interesting looking people in the airport and then follow foreigners around on their travels in Japan.

A place serving Sasebo Burgers

In one episode they met an Australian guy who came to Japan to eat "Sasebo Burger". He had been in Japan before and tried it and loved it. He returned to Australia and worked for years to save enough money to go to Japan again, and now he was here to eat Sasebo Burger every meal, every day.

Big

My colleague thought this was interesting, and wanted to try this burger to see what would make people travel all the way from Australia just eat a burger. He found out that there is one place in Sapporo that serves Sasebo Burger, and my colleague went there and tried it. He has told me this story several times.

Yesterday, I also happened to pass by this place here in town, with another friend who had also had this conversation about Sasebo Burgers with my colleague recently. We decided to go in and try these almost mythical burgers.

How to eat a burger-instructions

They turned out to be very large, but other than that they were surprisingly normal. Good, but not very different from most other burgers. There was an interesting explanation showing you how to eat hamburgers, which was quite educational, though.

My friend, who is Japanese and a girl and thus very skinny, also wanted to order pumpkin croquettes in addition to the huge burgers. How do Japanese people stay so skinny?

Japan, not always very punctual

I passed a place that was closed but said that they are open from "around 18:00" to "around 2:00". For a country where the trains are rarely more than a few seconds late, this is a very loose schedule.

The Happy Cock

I passed a place that someone had decided to name "The Happy Cock". Not sure what kind of place it was, but it looked like a bar.

Living in Ass-Hand

On the way home from Kawasaki, we passed the station 「尻手」("Shitte"). This is written with the Chinese characters for "ass" and "hand". So there are people who live in a place called "Ass-Hand". I sometimes wonder if Japanese native speakers think of these kinds of place names just as names or if they think it is funny.

2 adults within 1 infant

The cycle boat rental sign specified that you should ride "2 adults within 1 infant". We did not have an infant, and I am not sure you could fit two adults in one anyway, so in the end a swan boat was rented instead.

There were also some turtles swimming around in the pond

Toilet culture in Japan

Back in Japan I had a few hours at the airport in Osaka. Japanese toilets are super advanced (remote controls, 20+ functions, aware if a human is near or not, etc.), super clean, super common, and completely free. The toilet culture is thus great. But apparently, you are not allowed to step on top of the toilet.

Going the Wright way

When nearing the airport, we were going down the Wright way.

British humor

I walked by a sign that told me that JRR Tolkien had never had drink in a bar I passed. Useful information.