I already talked about some to the food that you can get in the convenience stores. Also you can get fully prepared Japnese meals for about 6 dollars in a plastic tray. The portions of sushi and pickled vegetable are small and most of it is rice, but it is delicious.

In addition to having an incredible number of convenience stores, there is an even more incredible amount of vending machines. Basically they sell, cigarrettes, beer, soft drinks, tea and coffee. Sometimes they sell other things like ice cream. Between where I work and my house I counted 63 vending machines on the street. They are built sturdy like trucks. They have a deep metallic finishes and they actually work. All the time. How many times have I lost money in the US in a machine and then started to beat on it and shake it only to be reminded that 12 people die each year because the machines fall over on them? No need in Japan. They work. And the drinks are hot and cold in the same machine. Amazing. And if they are hot they are really hot ( they will stay hot for 20 minutes) and if they are cold they are really cold. My favorite is milk tea, which is Japanese tea with milk and sugar. I am addicted to it .It is a tremendous drain of energy to keep all these liquids heated or cooled all the time. 24 hours a day. However it is nice to know that where ever you are there are probably vending machines just a minute walk away.

If you ask any Japanese which they prefer, the very hot summer or the very cold winter, they always say winter. They say that it is easier to get warm than it is to get cooled down. This is a little surprising because many houses don't have heat. The traditional house which many people live in is made of wood slats and sliding panels. Heating it would be like trying to heat a house of popsicle sticks. I live and work in such a house. The Japanese system for keeping warm is to warm the person not the house. There is no central heating. There is one room in the house that is heated and everyone stays in this room as much as possible. In the other rooms you are on your own. Before bed you drink hot tea or sake or maybe you take a hot bath. Then you jump into bed under tremendous quilts and stay warm through the night.

Many houses have a kotatsu. This is an electric heater that is sunken into the floor. There is a table built over the hole in the floor. There is a blanket over the table and this keeps the heat in. It is wonderful to sit with your feet dangling under the kotatsu on a cold day. You get your lower body warm pretty fast. The only problem is that you don't want to get up. We have one at work and now that the weather is getting cold we eat lunch around the kotatsu. Sometimes I like to try to shake things up by playing footsy under the blanket, but they always know its me and furthermore they don't think its funny. "Stop it Frank", they say. "How did you know it was me?" I ask. "No one else would do that?" they reply. I think I violated one of the sacred rules of Japan, " THou shalt not play footsy under the kotatsu." Its really tempting though.

This brings me to the subject of toilets.There are 2 kinds here, the traditional Japanese toilet and the western toilet or throne. The "traditional " Japanese toilet is the kind where you squat over a porcelin hole in the ground. I have mixed feelings about this. While you do get a good stretch when you go this way and you don't have to worry about contracting bugs from the toilet seat, I always am worried that some part of my clothing is going to swing down at the crucial instant and that I will make my deposit there. The one at work must have been made with small Japanese in mind. I barely can wedge my body in there. So the other day when nature called I went around the corner to the Prince Hotel where I heard they had a western style toilet. There I discovered what may be the ultimate convenience . Maybe you've heard about heated toilet seats. This one is heated. When I sat down it felt nice and warm. Ahhhhh. I was surprised to see an entire control panel on my right side. I was feeling adventurous so I started to play with the dials and buttons. The first one shot a stream of warm water with great precision to a very sensitive area of my body. There was a slider switch and I found that I could control the temperature from very hot to cool. I found that I liked a temperature of 40.5 degrees. Another switch activated a dryer. That was an entirely new sensation.After about 15 minutes I came out of there feeling very refreshed and pampered.

The people at work wondered where I had been. Later, my friends and I speculated on how it was that the stream of water was so accurate, after all , people's butts come in all different sizes ( boy do they!). We feel that the Japnaese may have developed an "asshole detector" . If that is so, then it could come in very useful in many other social situations and especially political elections. Another person suggested that perhaps there is a video camera in there and someone is actually aiming it. I'm not sure how its done, but I can testify that it, like all the other machines here, works very well.
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