a thousand dreams in oven

This little bit of Engrish was on the bag that held another bag that held my cup of coffee last week in Tokyo. When you order coffee to go, it comes in a bag. All the cafes (including Starbucks) do a really good job packaging things to make them extremely bike basket-friendly and even more eco-unfriendly. I'm just saying packaging materials are used in abundance here...unlike in alden times.

This big piece of bread is proof that you can put a smiley face on any object, usually one with small dot eyes and a tiny mouth, and it will automatically become the cutest thing ever. Many things are appointed a smiley face. On the back of my pancake mix, the frying pan, the measuring cup of milk, and the egg all have cute faces on the directions. I might have already mentioned this a few times because I think it's rather fascinating.

This was the sumo tournament I went to last weekend in Ryogoku.  It was amazing! I sat in a box on the floor with three other people and watched the matches, one after another. We went on opening day so it was sold out. I was so lucky to be able to see this and to have Japanese friends who explained some things to me so I wasn't completely clueless. Afterwards, I had a really good dinner with these kind souls to the upper right. Sumo is a really big deal in Japan, and the wrestlers are really well known by most people here. The matches are very short, and the majority of the match time is spent with the players trying to intimidate each other by throwing sand in the air and lifting their legs up to the side (as seen in the picture above). It's so much more interesting watching this in person than on TV. I'd definitely recommend going sometime if you can!