Between the reality of its small size and the lack of real options in this relatively small city, it’s regularly full to capacity. Sometimes I’m amazed the wait staff can still wade through the crowd.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that turkey is an uncommon meat here in Japan, let alone whole turkeys. Whole birds are available from a select few mail-order importers, but they run close to $50 each. And that’s assuming you have someplace to cook the thing, as “full size” ovens are also rare.

With the double meat I got, this is easily the most turkey I could get in a reasonable meal.

Oh, also note the wet towelette (御絞り - おしぼり - oshibori) in the plastic wrapper. This is Japan, after all.

None of that mamby-pamby table sugar here, this is the pure stuff: bane of diabetics and enricher of their doctors, this is pure dextrose, or grape sugar as the bag says.

I found this in a regular supermarket, in the baking aisle as I recall. This 150g bag will set you back a little over $3.

Let’s make our own Pixy Stix!

Convenience stores in Japan often sell small buckets already filled with ice, as well as individual plastic cups filled with ice (including lids and straws, if you look carefully).

Here’s a sandwich made of a cinnamon danish bun with fruit, chocolate, and whipped cream filling.

Call me crazy, but even if you love desserts made with fruit and cinnamon, when packaged like this these sandwiches do not look appealing in the least.

Why, you pile them in one of these, of course.

Our school doesn’t use them because we don’t take kids to the park until they can walk properly on their own, but I seem to recall seeing them pretty full with about eight kids in there at a time.

If you look closely, you can see there are separate bicycle hand brakes for each of the large wheels on the sides, and the four small wheels are just swiveling casters.

It also looks like the center piece opposite the handles opens up to let kids in and out, but I’ve only seen kids lifted in and out, so I don’t know for sure.

I took these two pictures last week at the park near MSP, when another local preschool brought a large group of kids at the same time our bilingual classes were there.

I don’t really know for sure, but if I had to I’d guess that preschools in the US don’t take their kids off premesis at all. What do you think about these things?

Seriously, why did no one think of this before?

Believe it or not, the (not-pictured Step 2 of the) instructions were actually useful because the lock was like some sort of logic puzzle where you have to figure out the exact direction and angle at which two pieces of metal engage and disengage.

While conceptually a good idea to save space in those tiny airport restrooms (when was the last time you saw a stall as big as the one in the diagram?), this door proved more novelty than useful.

It’s basically a prison phone so you can talk to people on the other side without having to deal with going out of and back into the secure area.

Neat idea, eh?