Rants and Digital Snowfall (video link)

You may think that reindeers are incredibly rare in big cities such as Tokyo. Well, not so much I guess, because today I met one: Inside a restaurant near Omotesando Street in Harajuku. It is one of the few restaurants in Tokyo with more than one vegetarian choice on the menu.

Unfortunately it also belongs to the restaurant where the waiters and waitresses are talking to every foreign-looking person in English. While some of them are quite proficient at it, others look … like a trapped reindeer.

I think Japanese living in a foreign country to learn the language would also think that it’s rude to constantly get replies in your native language. Of course in other countries it’s custom to first address people in your own language and if they happen to look like a trapped reindeer, you would switch to English (or run far, far away).

So next time, I should really pretend to speak no English at all (which takes some effort because after all, I’m only speaking English and Japanese in this country) and hold my hand over the calculator if they want to show me how much I have to pay.

Okay, enough with the rants, time for some snowfall:I saw this animation on a building in Harajuku and liked it, so I took a short clip with my iPhone.