Cute and cuddly

The Japanese very obviously go for the cute and cuddly. Accordingly, one of the most heard Japanese words is "kawaii" (=cute). Even garages and other "serious" places have cute animals as in their company logo.

Parts of the city seem quite Disneyland-ish with game halls, photobooths where you can take silly pictures, stuffed animals, teenagers in all sorts of costumes. The pinker, the flashier, the cuddlier - the better it seems. When you walk the streets at night you see lots of people sitting in Pachinko halls and "relaxing" by inserting money into a machine and waiting for the little metal ball to make its way down. It's not like you actively have to do something, just insert money. Besides it's annoyingly loud in these halls and it's hard to see why you would consider that a cool way to spend your evening.

Johanna and me took a couple of silly pictures called "purikura". There are photobooths to take them everywhere. You can choose from various backgrounds and manually add all kinds of comic style items on after you've taken the pics. Some places also provide costumes and wigs so you can dress up before taking the picture.