There are certain things that every visitor to Tokyo expects to see, without which any record of a stay here would feel incomplete.

In this category are plastic food, as displayed outside restaurants to show what’s available inside:

This selection of Western dishes is, I think, a particularly alarming example. Check out the greasy gleam on those chips.

And then, of course, there’s Japanglish:

The above comes from a cosmetics shop in Harajuku, not far from where I found these:

Footsore from wandering, one might be tempted to restore oneself with this:

I’ve now been in Tokyo for about ten days. I’ve bought food and done laundry and navigated the subway by myself like a big boy. I’ve even managed to get a couple of days’ writing done. Maybe – maybe – I’m beginning to get the hang of things…

Last night I went on a tour of Aoyama Cemetery, the biggest and oldest graveyard in Tokyo.

Local taxi drivers, I heard, won’t stop here during the hours of darkness.

They speak of a woman in a blue (or white) dress who hails a cab and asks to be taken to a nearby destination, calling it by a strangely old-fashioned name.

But whenever drivers who pick her up take her there, they find she has vanished, leaving nothing but a pool of water.

Whether it’s the ghost or the upholstery-cleaning fees these cabbies fear the most, no one knows. ;D

Sam

I’m here! I’m actually here! Bwaha! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Um, sorry. On Trapped By Monsters, while I continue to try to adjust: hang on to your intestines (or at least know who’s stealing them) with The Right Guidebook.