Sweden, Netherlands

I was walking home today after buying a home made bentou, not a grotty konbini type. A Japanese man stopped me, and he started to babble in Japanese and English. He asked me if I was European, I told him Australian, and he said he lived in Sweden, no the Netherlands.

Of course, forgetting where you live is really easy, I mean, there are so many countries one may come from. Anyway, his family had just come over from Norway and were kind of homeless, and he was just off to the konbini. I offered him my bentou, but not the milk for Alice or my deodorant.

I mean, he smelled okay.

He looked quite hesitantly into the bag, and at Alice, and into the bag once again. Then he said he was really about to go to the konbini to get a chicken rice for his mother. I just kept thrusting the bag at him feigning ignorance of his gift-horse-looking-in-the-mouthness, douzo, take it, he keeps looking down to hungry Alice, douzo, douzo, finally he takes the pork and eggplant bentou. I personally think it's healthier than chicken rice, so he got a good deal. Anyway, he thanked me, bowed as he edged further into the road and the oncoming traffic. His Finnish mother thanked me by proxy, and he walked away to scoff my favourite bentou.

I ate half a peanut butter sandwich.

Bower

This is a pic I took in Kabuki-Cho, which incidentally is the red light district of Tokyo. I went there because of David. Anyway, when I first saw it I wasn't sure what it might be, from a distance it just looked like a pile of garbage. Upon noticing the ribbons in the trees it struck me as maybe a makeshift shrine. However, it appears to be a homeless person's home, the most creative I'd seen.

Lots of homeless live in Ueno park and they mostly use blue plastic tarps for shelter. When I went there with Bek I saw a woman trying to reach a branch to pick some of it's berries. I don't know what kind they were but I reached up and pulled it within arm's length for her. She hurriedly spit out the berries she had in her mouth and grabbed some more. The thing is she didn't look homeless at all, maybe she just liked berries. Most Japanese homeless are very presentable and you wouldn't necessarily guess them as being homeless.