Public service announcement on the Osaka subway admonishing you NOT to have meet-cutes on the subway!! You could damage your vintage 2007 flip phone!!!
Vending machine from the Osaka subway labeled "FEED ME ORANGE" which has a bunch of whole oranges on a hopper and when you pay it pulls one, squeezes the juice out of it, and serves you just-made fresh orange juice
I started writing some body horror about dropping Kirby in your bathtub and it turns out he's a bath ball and he dissolves while smiling the whole while, but everything I came up with was too horrible to post
Promotional signage by Rene Magritte
Ok I got a explanation from a protected account abt this https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113400800877383368
Apparently "image" is "Wasei-eigo"— an English borrow word that took on a distinct meaning unlike its original meaning. This happens in all languages, it's why reborrowing exists, but it happens so much EN->JA there's a word for it.
The English word "Image" in a Japanese sentence means "impression" or abstract mental picture. So someone left "image" in a Japanese sentence untranslated, bc it was "already English"…
We're gonna see some projection mapping tonight!
"Please refrain from hitting, kicking, or poking the artwork", a prerecorded voice said
There's a guy on the Osaka subway wearing a full penguin costume… he's got a good vibe. I trust him implicitly
Toilet paper with unusually intricate branding
Okay, Mina-san, it's time to go to Nagoya! Time to get in your travel bag!
Me when I am in a subway and suddenly the train bursts out from underground into daylight and is now outside traveling across a bridge over water
We passed by another of those "Feed Me Orange" juice-squeezed-while-you-watch vending machines (see upthread) but this time I just looked at it and was like… well, actually I could really go for some orange juice right about now.
So I tried it and… okay!! It was actually some really good orange juice!!
Okay wait re: last post I just realized if I'm going to post about the orange juice robot machine I PROBABLY should have mentioned the reason I was by this vending machine in the first place, was because it was on the street outside a gorgeous, UNESCO-World-Heritage-recognized 1200-year-old Buddhist temple overlooking on one side the entire city of Kyoto from above and on the other side a literal magic waterfall. That's probably relevant
Sorry I didn't mention this detail earlier
What was interesting about this temple (Kiyomizu-dera) was it was really more of like… a complex? There's a part built in the 8th century, and a part built in the 1600s, but then there's just all this other … stuff, all around the site, which seems to be its own thing with its own individual history, some of it very mysterious if you can't read Japanese signage (attachment #2: why are there dogs? why do they look so friendly? are they meant as guardians? or are they just happy to see you?
Anyway if you choose to drink from the waterfall whose water possesses mystic powers, it turns out they dealt with the sanitation problems inherent in this by storing the ladles used to capture and drink it in a machine that constantly sterilizes them with UV light. Japan has this religion thing down to a science (spoken approvingly)
Dotonburi River, Osaka at night. This image has not been postprocessed
Immediately following taking this photo I waited 20 minutes in the rain outside a tiny six seater Izakaya meaning to politely step in when someone stepped out, thought maybe I should actually check they were accepting customers at all, found out they weren't, stepped in a puddle and drenched my socks, got completely lost and wound up at Crab
Ran into Toby Fox in the basement of a mall in Osaka
(the location these were found for sale implies these at some point were in a gacha machine)
Spiffy is cool. Tuxedo Sam. Tuxedo Sam always turns up in the middle of everything. Being spiffy and cool is easy for a little blue penguin.
When you get tired of femme moding and you decide today you will just fall back to comfy Robot
Walking through the Osaka rail station I saw a dude in his late 40s wearing an open button-down under which was a T shirt reading "FOLLOW YOUR FUCKING DREAMS". I am telling you this because I wanted to post the below image but it did not seem like enough of a post by itself.
But I do like this image
To follow up on my post above (Quote: "Beans") Miguel just posted a thread of his photos from that event on bluesky, and he got a photo of the projection mapping monoliths half sunken in the lake
https://bsky.app/profile/spookysquid.bsky.social/post/3l7wvq7r6dd2y
Miguel Sternberg (@spookysquid.bsky.social)
On a rainy train to Nagoya with @spinningmind.bsky.social and @dryad.technology for the next leg of my trip. Good chance to post about TeamLabs Botanical Garden Osaka, which we hit up a couple nights ago.
Going for some slightly aggro fashion choices tonight
I was like "hmm my hair's a little out of control tonight… might as well lean into it"
Okay this is maybe a little too specific to ever come up but if anyone ever wants a recommendation for an Indian restaurant in Nagoya, Japan, I have you covered
(Fluffiest naan I have ever eaten in my *life*, it was incredible)
Fusion of humans and technology
In Osaka Station on Friday I saw a diaper vending machine. Frick!! That makes so much sense!! Why is this the first time in my entire life I have ever seen such a thing!!
90% of my communication on this trip has consisted of nodding
Imagine if you were a cat and a fox living in a tiny house and big terrible humans kept stomping around peeking in the windows and taking photos because your living situation is "cute" and "magical". Terrible.
@mcc w-who is this mysterious figure up on the balcony 👀
mcc
Owen Nelson