This stuff is a good snack to start off a wonderful evening of drinking and talking with friends or lovers.

LOL

Hah, that puny toy! I'm saving up for a zzzPhone. http://www.zzzphone.com/ I'm reliably informed it comes with 3 zillion emoji that will even animate after printing out.

I thought 7:1:0 was an occasion for celebration, like shichi-go-san.

I thought this would be a hot dog story: "One Hachiko dog to go, hold the onions!" You know?

Not actually a big fan of this stuff as custard always seems like more of a dessert to me - but it is interesting to see the recipe.

That cracked me up ^^;

Seeing these numbers makes me actually want to try putting some effort into my blog one of these days...

I'd like to know how you can clean up 200 larvae in 3 minutes!

Sorry about that Billy. I am really sorry that I did not tell you first. I am the one who should be more careful.

I have seen stuff like this happen a lot back home. It is really sad to watch and even more sad to live in these towns. I wish the best for these people.

The guy has an interesting sense of humor that is for sure.

Just cannot say no to the dog story.

"The railway car was cleaned immediately but the train was delayed by about three minutes" Only in Japan would a three minute delay after a worm attack be considered a bad thing. Back home they'd be applauding such an insignificant delay.

Yeah, I meant the first, whether it was the time of your daily commute or something.

I always though that the 7:10 was a flight time. It takes about that long to get to Tokyo from Honolulu.

Not sure what you mean, Nick. Do you mean in the title of the website "7:10 to Tokyo" or in the title of the JapanSoc post. If the first, it just means the 7:10 morning train into Tokyo from Anytown station. If the latter, it automatically appears in titles when submitting them to JapanSoc. Guess, I could delete it if it seems weird or whatever...

That is so awesome!

Sad! I've been to this town. Those melons are to die for!

The old restaurant - the italian place in the white building, the beer hall, or the trailer-like unit that may have been there illegally? Changes, yeah. The station used to be like a sleepy countryside station. These days, I always marvel at the elevator-to-ramp-to-an-elevator in the station. And the skywalk they installed about 3 years ago, then came and removed it in the middle of the night for the new construction. Now there's just a big hole.

You're right - looks pretty promising. Definitely professional.

I think it's a marketing campaign to bring in a wider base of customers (not appeal to the wider base as a whole, but rope in consumers on the outskirts). They're trying to appeal to the Starbucks crowd - the one's with a free enough budget to spend 500 yen on a cup of drip coffee on a regular basis, and Shibuya is just the place to start, where you can stand on the street corner nearest Hachiko and see two Starbucks. Customers who already go to McDonald's will continue to; this isn't targeted at them. But shouldn't the "Quarter Pounder" in Japan be the "0.113398093 Kilogrammer"?

Kind of a shame what's happened to Nikotama in the last couple of years. I suppose it might recover once Tokyu's Delta City-like vision for the area is completed, but it's kind of a downer to walk through there these days and think about how much it has changed just in the last four years. Not to say the area isn't still nice though. I just miss that old restaurant that used to be right on that non-existent river. ;-)

Blimey, Kichijoji is #1 once you take the outlying cities into account. That would explain why my rent is so expensive.

Futakotamagawa (#2) . You don't want to live here..there...I mean. Nothing there. Don't go there. Lots of construction, no restaurants. No river nearby. Lots of country folk. Wouldn't go to Nikotama if I were you.