Scai the Bathhouse
The national pastime in Japan is not baseball or sumo; it is bathing. These days, most people have a really nice ofuro (お風呂) room in their apartment for such activities. Back in the day, few people could afford such a luxury so they went to the sento (銭湯 or public bath or bath-house) on a regular basis. Sadly, most of these are now gone.
You can still spot the remaining sento from a distance, though, because of the smoke stack (visible in the above picture). Notice that no steam is coming out of this one. That’s because it is no longer used as a sento. Instead, Scai the Bathhouse, the name written in English on the wall in the above photo, has been converted into an art gallery. You can find it in the Yanaka part of Tokyo.
The wires hanging above the streets in Japan drove me crazy for a while. Then I got used to them and hardly took notice. Returning to the USA caused me to notice the lack of wires. It’s strange how the mind works–focusing on differences rather than the “normal.”