Vending Machine Hippos

Kyoto photos
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

The Photo

That's one of the photos Dave recovered for me yesterday. It's a photo of a vending machine that I took while standing at a bus stop in Kyoto. You can't really see from the reflection at the top of the photo, but the vending machine is offering ties (red or blue, about 1,000 yen), disposable cameras, memory cards for digital cameras, and batteries. I was kind of surprised at this because I had never seen such offerings. In Tokyo, vending machines are ubiquitous of course, but the thousands I saw during my time there only offered drinks (soda and coffee usually, but also cocoa or milk or other kinds of energy drinks and sometimes corn pottage--which is considered a drink), cigarettes, liquor, and condoms. In my experience, rarely did Tokyo vending machines sell food of any kind (though there was an ice cream vending machine or twenty in Ueno park, sometimes within a few feet of an ice cream restaurant).

Batteries and ties and data cards and disposable cameras and the like were all offered at the twenty-four hour convenience stores that dot the Tokyo landscape. (Just as an example, I passed five of them on my seven minute walk to the gym, and there were eight or more within a ten minute walk of my apartment.)

Children and the Like

I think these two things are related:

Thing One: Tonight Dave and I went to dinner at Saigon Restaurant. As we finished our dinner, a tiny two-year-old girl walked by our table, saw Dave and slowed way down to eye him. Dave was sort of, like, is that child looking at me? Because what do I do? Tell it to stop already. (He gets a little skittish around kids.) But I engaged her, and Dave, realizing that it was safe to do so, did also, and that made the little girl start to do a little showy dance. Her mother rightfully apologized to us, saying she hoped we weren't trying to have a conversation or anything, but we assured her that it was fine. The little girl continued displaying a repertoire that consisted of dancing, smiling, and giggling, but when her mother asked her if she wanted to say something, she became shy and then tearful. Several times her mother tried to take her by the hand, but the little girl turned a cold shoulder to this tactic and continued to engage us.

"I think it's because you look Asian," her Asian or half-Asian mother said to me,"And she likes your vibe."

Thing Two:Tonight Dave stumbled upon a video of a family in South Africa who have a hippo.

Seven years ago, the patriarch of the family, a game warden, found a day-old hippo washed up on a riverbank. Because he had raised abandoned elephants and buffalo and lions, he decided to take the little hippo home. Seven years later, the little hippo weighs about three-quarters of a ton and still lives largely with the family--despite having access to a river and a group of wild hippos with whom she often spends time. Not only does the family come down to the river (hippos normally spend most of the day in water and come out at night to graze) to visit her and to feed her and give her coffee (!) a couple of times a day, but the hippo is also welcomed inside the house. There, she stands at the kitchen counter and begs for snacks and beds down with the family's pet dogs outside on a mattress. Apparently she is confined to the kitchen after breaking a sofa and bed.

The father in the family thinks that either the hippo considers herself human or she considers them to be hippos. The mother says that she is just like another child and pets and massages her and sometimes covers her up at night with a blanket.

Normally, the cynic in me eschews this kind of thing, but the hippo is really quite cute.