Ice Cream

I'm not the first to notice that Japan has some unfortunately delicious prepackaged ice cream.  Lingering lunch breaks invite a 120 yen surcharge from the canteen vending machine.  Creamy sweetness, appropriately portioned so as to neither zap your caloric intake for the day, nor leave you groggy for the afternoon.  A winning decision before an afternoon rehearsal or Wakuwaku concert.

Having become privy to this non-sushi splendor of the Japanese diet, it never caught my surprise to hear the universal chimes of the ice cream truck in the narrow apartment roadways.  Thankfully, it seemed, no place on earth was without the harkening music box melodies of spontaneous sweetness.  It took me back to childhood summers.  The game of hearing the coming truck, quickly convincing parents that it was necessary to donate a dollar, and catching it before the doppler effect whisked it by your front door.  Of course there was always the swimming pool, effectively making use of the 15 minute adult lap swim time to run outside the entrance to the sweet embrace of endless electronic calliope.  So many fond memories of the ice cream truck and the summer days that it symbolizes.

And so comforted to hear it's sweet strains here in Japan.  Perhaps so much so that I never bothered to notice a lack of outdoor public swimming pools, or children running to greet it.  Nor did I notice the odd hours that it kept.

Until this morning, I had an assumption about ice cream trucks in Japan, making a superlative dessert in the country accessible to children everywhere.  As I was riding my bike to the hall, around 9am, I heard it from around the corner and looked forward to my first encounter of seeing one live.  I envisioned kawaii (cute) smiley faces on dancing ice creamsicles.

What I could not have been less prepared for was the garbage truck.  Crushed, like the bags of whatever-today's-garbage-was.

Having found videos of this online, a Chinese one seems to suggest that the function of this music is to signal when people can bring out their garbage, avoiding stinky accrual on the street.  This doesn't seem to happen here, at least not in this part of Japan.  A video of a Japanese garbage truck, pink and pleasant.  They don't even really smell.

While I'm happy that the Japanese have made even garbage aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable, I have to say that a small childish part of me is slightly disappointed.  Perhaps it's best though.  At least I discovered this before running after the garbage truck with my spare change.