This one's for you skeptics who didn't believe me when I said earwax shovels are popular gifts. Here you see a variety of ends... needless to say, the cow's my favorite (no I didn't buy one).

It's a bit blury because I took this one from a distance. Taken at Yasukuni Shrine, a picture of a policeman standing in front of a ultra-nationalist propoganda machine (literally). I'm not sure if the police man is supposed to guard that van or keep an eye on it...If you're not sure why this is so odd, at the top of the van in yellow lettering, it says "sonno-joi". A popular slogan among anti-Shogunate rebels during the end of the Tokugawa era (and early parts of the "Meiji Restoration"), it means "hail the emperor and expel the barbarians". Needless to say, by "barbarians" they meant "foreigners" (mostly Westerners).

Just to be clear, this isn't a particularly common sighting, and is in no way representative of common Japanese sentiments. The fact that it was taken at Yasukuni Shrine is significant: the shrine was built to honor Japanese soldiers lost during WW2, and is generally considered the mecca of Japanese ultra-nationalism.

To city planners in Tokyo, it was clear that rivers were a waste of space...

Baskin Robins near Tokyo Dome. If you look closely, you can see the line extending beyond the entrance. I actually got in line to get ice cream, and had to wait 15 minutes for my turn.They had a special deal where, if you buy two scoops, you got a third for free. Here's the interesting part. If you were getting 3 scoops of ice cream in the US, you'd tell them what you wanted for the first scoop, they'd get that, then you tell them the second, they get that, and then you tell them the third. In half the cases, they would ask you twice. In Japan, you tell them which three flavors you want, and they go get the three flavors in one go. In no case will you be asked to repeat yourself. Not even when the line extends out the door.

Are Japanese ice cream shop workers smarter? Not really. It's merely the result of an education system that focuses on brute memorization and direction following.

That guy in the middle is holding a sign that reads "end of line". An idea typically Japanese, it is both brilliant and stupid. Brilliant because it ensures that people find the end of the line, but it's stupid because it implies that people are incapable of finding the ends of lines on their own. Besides, if you ask me, hiring someone to hold a sign that reads "end of line" should be a crime.