Your Japanese word of the week is...

"nan ja sore!!". Ok, it's not a word. It's not even what I'd call "normal". It actually means something along the lines of " 'the hell is that!!" and the more incredulous of a tone you say it with, the more emphatic it becomes.

Yes, what you see above is what I came home to the other day. In case you can't see it clearly due to the ridiculous amount of light it's throwing off, it's a vending machine. "What the~?!?", I said. I've been meaning to write something about the myriad vending machines in this country so this would be a good time to do so.

Vending machines, I think, are the most accurate symbol of this country's obsession with choice and consumption. There are hundreds of different kinds of coffee and twice that when you consider you can get the some coffees both hot or cold. You can get various kinds of vitamin drinks or sports drinks or teas. You can even, on certain machines, adjust how strong of a coffee you want and how much cream and sugar you want in it.

That's the thing with this country- you can never have enough choice and there are enough people to consume it all. Take the cars for instance: Toyota can build two or three essentially identical cars and people still buy enough of them to make the business plan viable. The difference may be visual or, like, one or two seats, but people here are specific about what they want and nothing beats having something exactly the way you want it.

Sure lots of Canadians are also picky about what their Starbucks is like, but I find the scale of superfluous selection to be a bit over the top here.

What's more, people are constantly consuming. New TV's, new phones, new cars, new clothes, new, new, new. Perfectly good microwaves are lying in back alleys all over Japan simply because they're a few years old. And so, because people are constantly buying coffees or cars, it's not a problem to offer lots of choices.

As for the vending machine right next to my door........ I have no idea why it's there, but I actually don't mind. I mean, it is convenient to basically have an eternal supply of drinks for some spare change.

What does take a bit of getting used to is how bright it is. That picture's not a joke; when I walk past it, it's bright enough that it takes my eyes a few seconds to readjust to the darkness to find my keys. And it also lights up my room in a pale blue that makes me think I'm constantly being abducted by aliens...............

And, ironically, the drink choice is awful. It's all coffees, teas, and overpriced "glacier water" that I don't drink. About the only interesting drink there is a D1 coffee, which I believe has, at some point, sponsored the D1 Grand Prix drift series.

The only problem is I don't have a car. Soooo............

Perhaps I can chug a D1 coffee and drift...... my bike....... to the train station.......

Perhaps............. =P