The pictures are from a train station near my apartment. I hate the way this blog posts my pictures. They never come out the way I lay them out or as they appear in the preview. Oh, well. I imagine you can sort them out.

The first one, well, one of them, is, I think, in a bank. My knowledge of kanji is pretty limited, but it looks like a bank to me and I think he’s holding a bankbook.

I like that this shows the way English is used in Japan, but my advice to this guy would be if you’re going to try to do something illegal, don’t wear a jacket that says Bad Man on it. What a give-away.

That’s a hanko falling out of his pocket. A hanko is a personalized stamp that every Japanese person carries. It’s required on all official paperwork. I had one made up with my initials, although foreigners are allowed to just sign or initial documents in the spot reserved for the hanko.

The second picture is similar to the earlier picture I posted of the signs that can be seen warning that perverts may be hanging around the area. This one, though, I think is warning the perverts (chikan). Basically, it’s reminding them that it’s illegal to grope the schoolgirls.

It reminds me of the 1940s and ‘50s noir art on magazines and paperbacks in the U.S.

I’m just reporting on the sociological import of the posters here and not making light of the problem itself. I think I mentioned earlier that groping is a big enough problem that many of the trains in Tokyo have ‘Women Only’ cars in use during the rush hours.

I understand that there are also plainclothes police on the trains on the lookout for gropers. The trains can get really unbelievably crowded (remember the guys with the white gloves who push people into the train cars if they can’t quite work their way in by themselves?) so there must be a lot of unintentional groping going on as well. I’ve never seen any confrontations between groper and gropee, but I’ve heard stories.

Speaking of crowded trains, I was in Tokyo last Saturday. I’ve tended to stay away from the city for the most part since the March 11 earthquake. I’m a bit paranoid of being stranded there in the event of another earthquake. I was planning to go up to the observation deck at the top of the Sunshine City building in Ikebukuro a while back and realized that I didn’t want to be up there if things started shaking again.

It’s kind of a phobia with me. Back in about 1980, I went to the top of the World Trade Center. Standing up there, I could feel the building move and I did not like it. I still have nightmares where I’m in a tall building and it’s swaying back and forth.

I live on the top floor of my apartment building and the frequent earthquakes - small ones, mind you - remind me of my nightmares. Of course, it’s only the fifth floor, but still...

At any rate, I was in Tokyo on Saturday. The possibility of earthquakes was offset by the reality of the heat. It was a very hot day and humid and sunny. People waiting to cross the streets all huddled into what shade they could find, even for the minute or two it takes for the lights to change. It wore me out and I was looking forward to getting home even to my hot, shaky, fifth floor apartment.

I went to a used book sale close to Ochanomizu (translation; Tea Water), where I’ve found some good books before, but there were no English books for me this time. I then went to Takadanobaba (translation: Takata’s Horse Riding Grounds) which is a good area for used bookstores. Unfortunately, there weren’t any English bookstores. Actually, there is one called Blue Parrot Books, but I’ve been there and I was looking for new places.

A friend of mine had told me about another English bookstore in the area, but, of course, I wasn’t able to find it.

I went into one bookstore and asked the person working there if they had any English books. The question was in Japanese - Eigo no hon ga arimasuka - but she asked me in English, “English books?”. I thought that was a little odd since our conversation was in Japanese, but I said yes and she said no and I just looked around the shop for a few minutes. Then it dawned on me that the shop specialized in movie books. ‘Movie’ in Japanese is Eiga, ‘English’ in Japanese is Eigo. She had just been clarifying in English whether I wanted English books or movie books.

She then gave me directions in Japanese to an English bookstore along with a map and I set off again on my quest. Not surprisingly, to me anyway, I never found the place.

I have a huge problem with maps in Japan. There’s some kind of cultural understanding of maps in this country that is foreign to, well, foreigners. Okay, it could just be me. I don’t think I have ever once been able to find a place on a map in Japan at one go. One time I remember, I followed a map trying to find a hotel and got hopelessly lost. I managed to find my way back to the train station where I’d started and got my bearings again. I looked at the map more closely and finally turned it upside down and was able to find the hotel that way.

Anyway, I wandered around Takadanobaba, hot and tired, for a while, but the only English book I found was a copy of Porky’s II. I gave it a pass.

Dragging my feet, among other body parts, back to the train station, I saw a sign that said, in English, ‘Used Books - Second Floor’. I was so beat at that point that I almost passed it by because I didn’t want to walk up the stairs. I talked myself into it, though, and climbed up to the second floor and asked the bookstore guy, in Japanese, if he had any English books. He told me, in Japanese, no. It was faintly reminiscent of a Monty Python skit.

Okay. Why would someone advertise ‘Used Books’ in English and not have any used books in English? What customers is he trying to attract? Japanese customers don’t need the English. English speakers looking for Japanese books don’t need the English. The only people who need the English are people like me who are looking for English books... and there aren’t any.

I think he just liked the way it looked on the sign. Ah, the power of English...