The New Apartment

We have made the big move. We said goodbye to Futako Tamagawa and hello to Futako Shinchi. It was only a ten minute walk across the Tama River but things are very different in our new hood, all in a good way of course. One of the first things we noticed when we moved in was that there are many kinds of vending machines in Kawasaki that they don't have on the other side fo the river in Tokyo. The most popular vending machine in our neighborhood is the fresh egg machine. Every time we head to the station we see at least one or two people getting fresh eggs out of it. Local farmers keep it well-stocked and the fact that they are so fresh means that no refrigeration is required. We cooked some of them up the other day and we very impressed. The other type of vending machine on the Kawasaki side of the river is the beer machine. These used to be ubiquitous on the Tokyo side but naughty gaijin teens (guilty as charged) took advantage of this and soon the authorities got rid of them. The Kawasaki side did not get rid of theirs although they are a bit more complicated than the ones I remember. The machine takes a picture of you (can it tell how old you are that way? still not sure...) and then asks you to put your driver's license into a slot. At first I thought this might be so that they can compare you picture on the license with the picture it just took of you, but I was able to buy an ice-cold asahi with J's license even though the machine took a picture of my face and not her's!