Obvious Restaurants

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Today was yet another day of exhaustion. We had the first day of our class match at school—all of the homerooms compete against each other in various sporting activities—plus I revised a recommendation letter that another teacher wrote for one of his students, and did some coaching for an interview exam that a few of my students will have on Sunday.

And that was just the morning. I took the afternoon off and, among other things, dealt with a whole bunch of moving-related logistics. Is this interesting? I think not, so I’ll give you a couple of photos to look at.

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Random Reader Rewards: The Prizes

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The dogs at the local Buddhist temple are making a big ruckus—their barking is echoing off the concrete building and creating a feedback loop—which means it must be nine o’clock. This random bit of trivia has nothing to do with today’s post topic but is part of the nightly reality of Kannonji-machi.

I only just remembered my promise about sending out random gifts to commenters. Well, that’s not exactly true, but I’ve only just had time to make good on the promise. Today, you get to see some of the wonderful prizes that I’m going to put into the care of the Japanese postal system later this week.

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An Average Sunday, Plus Powerful & Sexy Women

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In which I briefly mention American white trash during a tangent about a fashionable hat, but mostly talk about a day spent shopping, visiting friends, cooking, and packing.

Today we spent some time with Lia’s friend Yoko. We did a little shopping, ordered a couple of inkans—Japanese name stamps—and had lunch with Yoko’s parents. Later, I cooked up a storm, and we had a fabulous supper.

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Comme Ça Xmas

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Today we revisit the photos I took at the Comme Ça Store in Riverwalk Kitakyushu a few days before Christmas 2003. I was rendered completely speechless at the time, but I’ve since recovered. Even so, before reading further you may want to put down any food and drink you might be consuming.

I’m not making any promises, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, either.

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Comme Ça Winter 2005

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Judging from the number of photos I’ve taken of them, I must have some kind of obsession with the mannequins at the Comme Ça Store. Today I have photos from the Canal City mall location in Fukuoka.

And before I forget, happy Canada Day! The rest of this post has nothing to do with Canada’s birthday, but you’re welcome to read on anyway.

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Comme Ça Dogs

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In yesterday’s post, Pat asked if that really was a dog among the window display mannequins. The question made me realize that I’ve come to see pet mannequins as a normal part of the shopping experience. They just blend in with everything else and seem so unremarkable that I can’t even remember if there are such things back home. Are there?

In any case, for today’s post I made a slightly clearer crop of yesterday’s photo, starring the dog. And then I dug through my photo archives for some more samples.

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Comme Ça, Baby

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You can skip this preamble if you want, and go directly to the next paragraph. I had a really long day, filled with correspondence and bureaucracy, mostly having to do with our preparations to play continent leapfrog—unrelated to incontinent leapfrog, something that I do not want to see—starting in July. So today’s post is much shorter than I had hoped. I’ll probably end up splitting what could be one long post into a series of shorter ones.

I’ve written briefly the Comme Ça Store before. It’s a chain of stores that primarily sell clothing. You can read more about them in the I do not think it means… post, which was one my first descriptions of strange English usage in Japan. The Comme Ça description in that writeup is too brief but it’ll have to do. You may have to scroll down or do a text search to get to the Comme Ça part.

But enough about the past. Today you get a brief description—and two photos—of a small corner of the baby wear section of the Comme Ça Store.

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