An advertisement for a mochi making festival on January 14. Mochi is a made by pounding rice until it resembles taffy. It's usually sold as "cakes" or in little round balls.
A salmon-colored apartment building in an adjacent neighborhood. This is pretty radical for largely grey and beige Tokyo.
Folks buying soba (buckwheat noodles) in the evening on New Year's Eve to eat as part of their traditional celebration. They have to eat it all up by midnight (usually starting at 11:00 pm) or they'll have bad luck. This is called toshikoshi (year crossing) soba.
Various bits of foliage being sold to make traditional New Year's decorations (kadomatsu). Pine branches are priced at 525 yen or about $5.30 each.
A kuro neko (black cat) delivery service van. This is one of several courier services that functions like UPS in the United States. Most of them have animal mascots and casual as well as formal names. This company's real name is "Yamato".
The "Doggie Bag" shop name is odd enough, but the Japanese above it says "clumsy" as well (ku-ra-mu-ji) in katakana Japanese and in English.
A message painted on the road from our local city office telling people they can't smoke while walking on the street. Tokyo has slowly transitioned from a smoker's paradise to being quite restrictive.
Sweets and booze at an import shop. A large Hershey bar is 330 yen or about $3.50. Most of the prices are double or triple what they'd cost in their native countries.
Mega-Mac burgers at McDonald's. If you can't tell from the picture, the top one comes with an egg (tamago).
A 100 yen shop with a dumb French-sounding name. These are the equivalent of dollar stores and sell lots of cheap, largely Chinese-made junk.
A courier truck parked outside a typical residential area. Notice how ugly everything is and how narrow the streets are. This is the "real" Japan.
A public bulletin board offering announcements and services. The handwritten white one in the middle is for English lessons and offers a free first lesson and low rates.
