Tigers and Cranes

First time I’d seen a mailman in Japan, I was quite surprised. I suppose I expected all mailmen of the world to be driving around in either a Jeep with no door, or a squat van. But, in reality, they deliver mail the old fashion way… on a scooter. I suppose this is fine for a country like Japan, where there’s not a lot of junk mail that’s delivered to a home. Actually, this does infuriate me, the fact that in America, for example, one is delivered a veritable tome of useless flyers and junk mail.

What junk mail I did receive in Japan were usually discreetly tucked in my mail slot, mostly advertisements for, uh, “women of ill repute.” Some of them are quite graphic, actually. The flyers, I mean, not mailmen. What’s interesting is they have prices printed on the flyers for, ahem, various services that women may perform.

One other type of junk mail I didn’t mind getting was pizza flyers. Yeah, yeah, sausages, ham, onions, etc from Pizza Hut. But this being Japan and all, the ingredients are sometimes quite varied. To wit:

- shrimp
- squid
- corn
- possibly seaweed

and what’s up with Mayo? But, I have to admit, they are delicious, even the mayo pizza. Too bad they are hellaciously expensive! I’d say good twice the cost of American Pizza Hut. And, just like the intrepid mailmen, they are usually delivered on a scooter.

Well, here’s an advert for Pizza Hut Japan’s “Sausage Crust”. What, you have cheese baked in your American crust? Pfft. Amateurs. Japanese bake damned sausage into their crust, along with more sliced sausage and even “bacon cheese”, just in case your cholesterol intake isn’t sufficient.

Now, I generally don’t like to actually eat the crust of a pizza, after all, to me, the crust of a pizza is the handle. What country are YOU from that eats a handle? But in this case, when the handle is made from pig parts, I may make an exception.

Notice the price, Walmart shoppers. It’s 2,400 yen for medium, and 3,450 for large. You get two pies, and that’s over sixty bucks. But as the flyer says, “It’s popular with kids!” Well, then. Time to bust out that yen note with some lady on it.

note: It comes with corn. CORN! What the hell are you guys thinking?

from Supersized Meals

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 1:03 pm and is filed under japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.