Spread the Fat

The company may be closing many locations in the U.S., but Krispy Kreme Doughnuts has decided that Asia is where the action is, especially in places that worship anything "new and Western," like Tokyo and Hong Kong. Kriskpy Kreme blamed the downturn in their fortune to the No-Carb Obsession of the Americans; perhaps they will have better luck here in Asia, whose people seem to have higher metabolism and to know moderation (although these days in China the children of the nouveaux riches seem to have expanding girth).

I was passing through the Shinjuku Southern Terrace back in December 8 of last year when I realized that there was a new addition to this commercial stretch that had already included a Starbucks and a seafood restaurant. It was the Krispy Kreme shop, and the sign said, "7 Days" until the opening, on December 15. Inside of the store, staff were working full time, doing a dry run, if you will. The machine was humming and doughnuts were being produced, and instructions were given to the underlings. At night time, with so thousands of practice doughnuts in abundance, they did not know what to do except to give them away to passersby.

Since its opening on December 15 until this article was written, the store never ran out of doughnuts and the new customers who loved them. Not only were faithfuls, new converts, and the curious patiently queued and filled the raised terrace area in front of the shop, but the line also continued at another side of the building (at the beginning of the bridge that connected the area to the Takashimaya department store), prompting the company to hire security staff to direct traffic from that line to the terrace.

I still remember in the mid-90s, when Krispy Kreme hit California. Not only was the line inside snaked all the way outside, but the drive-through queue caused traffic jam in the parking area of a mall complex in East Bay. I had my first taste of KKD in the mid-80s, when I was schooled in the South (Louisiana and Tennessee). I remember that when I went to one of the shops in Nashville, it was just like a diner, complete with at least two of the city's finest (police) perched at the counter. The shop was located in a rather deserted area, and from outside, the scene could pass for a stepsister of Edward Hopper's famous popular painting "Nighthawks." Who would have guessed that one day, I would run across Krispy Kreme at one of the hot spots of one of the most exciting metropolis in the world.

These Dogs' Lives...

The lives of those cute dogs in Japan may not all be that rosy. There are indeed plenty of adorable looking dogs popping up from some girls' handbags in the metro, or ones peeking out of others' jackets. Like the character Claudia from Anne Rice's "Interview with a Vampire," these dogs' growth and development seem to have been arrested permanently, leaving them in a perpetual state of cuteness and cuddliness. I often wonder why I had not seen many of these while living in America, but perhaps this recent article from the New York Times may shed light on how and why these dogs came to be.

Click HERE to read the entire article, titled "Japan, Home of the Cute and Inbred Dog," by Martin Fackler (December 28, 2006). Photo above by Masafumi Yamamoto for the New York Times.

Daisuke "DICE-K" Matsuzaka: The 51-Million-Dollar-Boy

When I boarded my NRT-LAX flight on Wednesday, the gate was chock full of photographers and newscasters. Turned out sitting in the same cabin as I was Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Seibu Lions pitcher known for his "Gyroball." Only 26 years old, and the Boston Red Sox paid $51.1 Million just to talk to him. You can read about it HERE.

During disembarkation, I got stuck in the gangway behind Matsuzaka-san, a rather tall figure. A handler was showing him the way through the immigration. Some passengers, upon learning who he was, started asking for his autographs. Many photographers and newcasters were ready outside of the arrival hall. The Boston Red Sox has 30 days to make up their mind about the boy.

Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Only in Japan

The picture on the left is of a small booth operating in Shibuya, one of the busiest public transportation hubs in Tokyo. The booth is like a newspaper kiosk where, in this case, only one person could fit into it. Tradition and hygiene dictate this person to remove her shoes before entering that small kiosk. The picture on the right showed her shoes neatly stored together by the door.

Imagine doing this in New York, London, or Jakarta: that person will be surprised to find herself walking home barefoot! Or perhaps she might be luckier and still could find her shoes, but not in the same shape as she had left them. I happened to be in the area and passing this booth a few times today, so I could say that her shoes remained intact throughout the entire day. Who knows? Maybe on other days someone does play a trick on her; or maybe she has a security camera trained on that pair of shoes, or the shoes had a Global Positioning System chip so that she could track the thief down. This is, after all, Japan.

Business Names

An American expatriate friend of mine told me that if he ever needed any dental work done, he would prefer to wait until he returned to the States, because he had heard that Japanese dental work was not good at all. Someone quizzed me one time why a lot of Japanese covered their mouth when they laughed. I said that it was perhaps out of modesty. Wrong, he said; it was because they did not want to expose their teeth. That was horrible, but was he right?

It did not help that the business on the picture above had the name Gross Dental Labor, and the name was repeated, making it look like Gross, Gross! I am sure it is the name of the person behind the business, not a name chosen out at random. Then again, when you go around Tokyo, you would see these mind-boggling company names: there is a bookstore called Book-Off, or this salon pictured below, whose name was Flash Bust-up Salon. WTH???