131. Possibly the cleanest trash truck I have ever seen.pic.twitter.com/DKsMuwepr7
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139. This vending machine had a bottle opener and a little bucket for caps. It also had… mystery items! I saw that in other machines in that town, too. The last photo is what I got, because of course I had to try it out.pic.twitter.com/kgNl45vaRj
140. An incomplete list of surprising things I ordered that also tasted surprisingly well: – hot green tea – hot milk tea – hot corn souppic.twitter.com/QlDwB4CDvO
141. This is something that made me really happy yesterday. I love Stanisław Lem’s books enough that I sometimes have a dream where I go to a bookstore and find a stash of his books that I somehow never knew of.
(Which is impossible – I have all of his stuff – but you don’t question the logic of a dream in a dream. So I get really excited, and then equally sad when I wake up.)
When I travel abroad, I often try to find his books. He’s popular enough for it to be possible, but not *hyper* popular, so it’s still a challenge. I failed in a few bookstores here, hopelessly lost. I started doubting if Lem was even read in Japan. Was *any* hard sci-fi?
But I didn’t give up. And in another bookstore yesterday, I seeked help. I went to a machine, and somehow (no English UI) figured out how to search for books.
I typed in “Stanislaw” instead of the easily matched “Lem,” and I got some results! They all pointed to this section right next to me that looked like an entire case filled with hard sci-fi.pic.twitter.com/rZwStOBwM4
Since I cannot easily read a spine, I have to go through them one by one. And I eventually find one of Lem’s books! It’s a paperback of The Futorological Congress with a horrible cover harking back to a failed movie adaptation.pic.twitter.com/P4VtFgFSh3
I guess it’s good enough? I gather that all the other results in the database were just old and not updated, or maybe in different bookstores…
But then, just before leaving, I looked up. And there, in the upper right corner, I found an entire section of Lem’s books!!! I never looked for a ladder faster in my life. They were there, with Polish titles alongside Japanese ones! Apparently Lem *is* “big in Japan,” too.pic.twitter.com/KmXJ5m5MSm
I think this was the closest I ever been in real life to that recurring dream of mine. And so, I got three, including a paperback of Solaris, and a hard cover of Fiasco, which is my favourite book.pic.twitter.com/TI4OzU0fPE
The books are read right to left, and have that small wraparound band called “obi” that is, I believe, specific to Japan. I remember it from CDs and it was there on the record I bought yesterday. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obi_(publishing) …pic.twitter.com/7V6SisilSS
So excited to have found them, and I’m actually going to try to read Fiasco! There are so many things here that perplex me: bolded bits and footnotes (neither present in the original). Chapters have their original Polish titles. There also seems to be a glossary at the end.pic.twitter.com/k8ZFZ3UXsI
Why are there two bar codes? (They actually scanned both.) Why is the text on the page split this way? It’s kind of incredible: this book that I have read so many times, appearing once again as a mysterious, unknown artifact.pic.twitter.com/vncGy32wHi
142. I found a bona fide train viewing area… and it wasn’t that hard to snap a photo with three different trains on it.pic.twitter.com/Js03UmD4jr
(I mean, look at these older trains on display at the museum. Those are some good-looking trains!)pic.twitter.com/cXJv1Vk1TN
143. How confident you have to be in your train network that your caveat is possibly about arriving somewhere *earlier*!?pic.twitter.com/CTMJAXUjEZ
144. There aren’t just millions of train toys. There are toys that are all about train infrastructure, like this car that transports train parts. <3pic.twitter.com/v6MsOaBsi9
…or other toys for “boring” transit options. I’d be exactly the kind of kid that’d get excited about “Midtown ticket counter.”pic.twitter.com/BhI0HyxmmJ
145. Speaking of transit infrastructure toys… here’s a gruesome dystopian vision that makes Cars feel like a kids movie.pic.twitter.com/OdBGvkMo5s
148. How lucky you must be as a museum to get your mascot designed by Miyazaki!pic.twitter.com/fJsMSRLivs
149. At the Gas Museum (sic!), gas range cookers that also look like faces.pic.twitter.com/7bCaxn5uO4
150. (150!) This is a particularly Marcin-shaped mystery. I know this clock from my childhood. From Poland. I recreated it in JavaScript. I wrote about it (https://medium.com/the-outtake/the-clock-85e8e3a50e4b …). So why is it here, now, all over the place!?pic.twitter.com/ZakyxPAz23
(Also, how likely it is for me to take two separate clock photos, on two different days, in two different cities, both at 10:26?)
151. A cute relaxed kitten plus a cute pictogram of its startled Schrödinger counterpart.pic.twitter.com/MsUikSiTLu
153. This ticket ordering machine had an impressively large touch screen.pic.twitter.com/w0vJq6ubaO
154. I generally liked the convention of lighting up things where you’d insert cards/money or get something out. Not new, but more comprehensive and more elegant. (Some lights would pulsate like old PowerBooks/MacBooks.)pic.twitter.com/P8qAnzSN7r
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