I don’t blog in a crowd, but how many people does it take to make a crowd?

It’s here! This is Chicken Rice? You can now officially Double Down in Downtown Kyoto. To be honest it might have been around for a while; I just don’t spend a lot of time loitering outside KFC, so I’ve only just noticed this ad:

Conversely, it took me about three seconds to notice that this poster has gone up at Nijo station:

I snapped it rather quickly and slyly using the old phone, so you’ll need to excuse the low quality I’m afraid. I particularly enjoy the curiously large, lance-like cigarette poking toward the child’s ear. It says simply “A lit cigarette is carried at the height of a child’s face”.  There’s also something poetic going on bottom right: “It’s painful to get caught between the closing doors. Even more on the eyes of those looking at you.” I’m not entirely convinced by the truth of this statement. I was once caught between the closing doors of the number 17 bus.

There’s a neat post about JT’s super curious and amusing posters here; you can take a look at the images close-up and see some of their other gems. Alone I constantly imagine personalised additions:

SHE COUGHS LOUDLY INTO HER SLEEVE. UNFORTUNATELY THE GERMS STILL REMAIN.

This is what the frozen rice paddies outside my house look like on a normal day in Nagahama:

This weekend I got out of old Nags and took the old JR line down to Kyoto.

WHEN I KNOCKED YOU WITH MY UMBRELLA I APOLOGISED. WHEN I ATE THE SMELLY EGG SANDWICH ON THE TRAIN, I SAID NOTHING.

I was banking on some sunshine, and the chance to walk up an down the street without the fear of slipping on ice. Imagine my delight when I woke up on Saturday morning, and pulled back the curtains to reveal the view of the rice paddies outside P’s place:

A BAD PHOTOGRAPH ABSORBS NOTHING AND BECOMES ONE OF HUNDREDS OF PIECES OF TRASH.

It turns out P has been hoping for a good deep snow all week because she’s dead-set on seeing more snow-covered temples and shrines. So, with her wish granted we took the opportunity to pop our heads in at the local shrine here in Sonobe. It was snowing heavily; a monk appeared from one of the buildings and spoke to us briefly. He reminded us to pray for health (genki, genki, healthy, marriage marriage – were, I believe, his exact words) and clap twice to alert the gods to our presence (or is it to wake them up? Both, perhaps). I was so bent on getting the structure of my prayer right that after I’d put my coin in, clapped, prayed, and moved on, I realised I hadn’t actually mediated on a prayer all. I never was very good at religion.

WHEN SOMEONE WALKS A STEP AWAY FROM ME, MAYBE IT IS A SILENT COMPLAINT ABOUT MY LACK OF CARE DURING PRAYER, AND THE SPIRITUAL VOID IN MY LIFE.