Recent Adventures - Kahma

This past weekend, Mike, Chloe, and I took a little field trip to Kahma. Kahma is our local home-improvement store. It's a little bit like Home Dep*t or L*we's, with a splash of Meij*r or W*al-Mart mixed in. Pretty cool. Fair warning - there are no Chloe pics in this post, as I was carrying both the camera and her. Too bad, too, since watching her watch the puppies is pretty cute.

It's beetle season in Japan! I haven't seen these things in nature yet, thank all that is good in this world, but they're in stores everywhere. I don't know if it's the size of the living quarters here or the fact that a dog or cat will set you back a good $2,000, but these nasty little - no, BIG - beetles appear to be an extremely popular pet here in Japan. As you can see, at 880 yen (less than $8), they're a good buy. And if your parents won't let you get the real thing, you can get the action figures, or the lunchbox, or the notebook, or pretty much anything else you could dream of with these cute little buggies on them. Yuck.

Mike wants one, you can tell. He's not allowed, though. No way, no how. The inflatable guy on the endcap might be permissible, but I don't think he's for sale.

Here's a close-up. See, now don't you want one, too? I know Keegan does. Just think what would happen if you put this guy in the silverware drawer! Bwahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!

This next photo is one you'll want to zoom in on. It's a tennis-racket-shaped electric flyswatter. Seriously. We didn't get it, but I think we should have. You just swing the racket and BZZZZZAP! end of bug. Sugoye!

And last but not least, we have the burglar rocks. As near as I can tell, you spread these rocks around your vulnerable areas and they make so much noise that they act as a burglar alarm. I stepped on them. They are pretty noisy. I think there might be an application around the Christmas tree, here.

Here's a close-up of the poster. Based on my superior understanding of the Japanese language, I can tell you that various varieties of the rock will yield between 67 and 102 decibals in burglar-thwarting volume, and that when said burglar hears the noise he will become terrified, drop your belongings, and flee. This is why Japan is such a safety country.

Airport Field Trip

To go a bit out-of-order... This weekend, we dropped off Chloe's Grandpa and Grandma Wildboer at the airport. Here they are saying good-bye to the happily unconscious babe... And here's a little family picture of the three of us...

And now for some Weird Japan! After seeing Mom and Dad to the gate, we decided to grab some Starbucks before heading home. The airport was having a little fair or something in their restaurant-and-shopping area - they seem to do this a lot on weekends - complete with the weird mascot below. This is the mascot for NHK, Japan's national television corporation. NHK is known for stalking and harrassing foreigners to try to get them to pay for the Japanese television they don't watch. See why they need a scary mascot? :) They have little toy action figures of this guy all over... but some things just shouldn't be life-size!

We also saw this man performing on some traditional Asian instrument. I don't know what it is, but I saw an old man on the street playing something similar in Taiwan many years ago. It was beautiful.

Japan Is Weird

As far as we can tell, Santa Poop is nursing his litter of pooplings here... Weird, I tell you, WEIRD!!!

I Saw the Sign!

Well, whichever way you go, don't go tossing your cigarettes any which way. The mean man of the mountain will GET you! 

And now, from the Annals of Weird Japan, we have a boy peeing on some pigeons. Life is art, indeed. This photo was taken my Chris and Patricia Houser, friends of ours from church and was taken on Tokushima, on Shikoku island. Thanks for letting me post this!