Breakfast and escalators

2 things I've experienced here that I've forgotten to share:

First, in Nagoya there is something called mooningu setto (the "Morning Set") which is very common for breakfast. The Morning Set consists of a cup of coffee, a hard-boiled egg, and toast. So if you walk into a cafe or some such in Nagoya, and they ask you if want coffee and you say yes, there's a good chance that you'll end up with a Morning Set. This is a tradition that gets 100% of my support.

Second, I noticed today while riding the escalator out of Minatokuyakusho-eki (Minato Ward Office Station) that the wall of the escalator right next to the steps doesn't have that little brushy thingy that you'd always use to pretend you were polishing your shoes with when you were a kid. I do not know why.

Okay, more than 2 things. One of the myths about Japan is that everyone is short. My experience so far has been that the average height of Japanese people is a little shorter than Americans, but I've also encountered quite a few people, men and women, who had at least 2 or 3 inches on me (I'm 5 foot 11 inches). I have read, again I can't remember where and again I regret that I cannot cite it, that the average height of a person in Japan is increasing with a suggested link to the increased consumption of milk, and thus calcium. Perhaps someone can back me up on this (or not; I'm not all that worried about research for this blog).

Also, today I picked up my Certificate of Alien Registration, commonly referred to as gaijin card, today. It's basically a card that all foreigners are required to carry with them at all times, and serves as identification as well as proof of your legal presence in the country. This practice first struck me as draconian, but in thinking of Japan, it really is paramount to consider just how small this country is. In the USA, efforts to establish a standardized federal ID (REAL ID) have met with extreme backlash, which makes sense to me considering that my country is a) geographically huge, b) hugely divided on nearly every political issue (though not as much as most media outlets would have you believe (in my opinion) and c) a state system with a federal system floating on top of that which as apparently unwilling to back their REAL ID imperative with funding to make it happen. Japan, however, is more tight-knit. There are states of sorts, referred to as -ken (or "prefectures"), and my understanding is that they do have their own policies of sorts. But Japan really is quite unified in governmental jurisdiction, especially considering that government and business are intentionally tied together in ways that are illegal in the US. Long story short, I'm not happy about having to truck my gaijin card around all the time, but the reasons for its existence are no mystery, at least.