The 100 Yen Coin and the Missing Egg

A typhoon hits Kyoto, so I went for ramen very close by. A mystery ensued.

I arrived on Thunderbird44 from Kanazawa.

It was already raining when I arrived.

We had been warned.

The rest of the world knows it as Typhoon Lan. Here, in Japan, it is simply Typhoon 7. Typhoon 6 was already slamming into the south west of Japan when I arrived, and 7 was brewing. They just didn’t know exactly where it was going to make landfall.

As a high pressure moved out into the Pacific, they thought the place was clear for a full assault on Tokyo.

They were wrong.

Instead, it tracked west, aiming for Tokai and Kinki regions.

Exactly where I was going to be.

I went to bed having seen the forecast. It looked like tomorrow was going to be a write-off

And when I woke up today, that forecast became reality.

The wind was strong, the rain was heavy, But other areas had it worse. Osaka had it bad. My fiends messaged from there saying that they could see a live feed from Kyoto and it looked terrible, and was I safe?

I said it wasn’t that bad exactly where I was, but that I was safe.

Emergency broadcasts started coming through on my phone. It’s easy to translate those these days. Looks like older people and schools were being evacuated from landslide risk areas in Kyoto City.

But not where I was.

I was staying in a pace sheltered in a covered arcade. Having had enough of watching weather warnings and enforced immobility, I wandered down to a safe place to get lunch. I found a ramen shop. The type where you pay your money, hit the button with for your order, and it gets brought out to you.

This was inJapanese but I live translated and snapshotted using the free Papago app. It’s very good.

But the waiter came over to help me out and took my order personally. We communicated in a mix of 10:1 Japanese : English. That’s all I can manage, it’s been so long.

I saw down. The ramen arrived. I tucked in.

The waiter appeared at my side and placed a 100 yen coin next to me. He said something but I didn’t catch what it was. He disappeared to talk with another customer.

I ate my food. It was delicious. The broth savoury and rich. I relished each mouthful.

I paid. I left. And then I thought, why did he put 100 yen at my side? Did he think I dropped it? I didn’t think it was that, because he also put 100 yen next to the guy next to me.

Is it a thing I didn’t know about? Were they having some discount day that I missed?

Let me break to a sidebar here. It’s relevant.

I’m on a social network called t2. Even since Musk bought Twitter - or X now - and turned it into a place where conspiracy theorists, bigots and racists can do what they like with nothing looking like moderation in place, I’ve been steadily posting less and less there. A pity, but that’s the world - always changing, not always for the better.

Anyway, t2 is kind of like Twitter in look and feel, and they’ve recently added a new feature where you have click a button and have instant translation of posts. And I’d noticed a lot of Japanese posts in recent weeks, as the user base starts to grow (it’s still pretty small with just over 13500 people).

So I posted on t2. And that got reposted.

One post led to another, until it led to someone in Japan asking me the name of the shop so they could investigate further.

And here’s what I got they found out.

Using the translation button, baiser actually called and asked what was going on. Apparently, there was an extra charge of 100 Yen for the egg but since it was the last egg, it was halved with another person - the guy sitting next to me. But because they couldn’t fulfil the order properly, they refunded the whole 100 Yen, and gave me half an egg anyway.

I did wonder why only half an egg - but I thought it must just be a thing at this shop. And it explained why the other guy got 100 Yen placed next to him too.

This is how you spend time when a typhoon derails your well-planned itinerary for the day - t2 managed to entertain me a little, and maybe you too. But it is an interesting way to break down communication barriers in otherwise linguistically silo’s social media platforms and communities.

It’s still invite-only on t2, but I have some invites available if you’re interested. Let me know.

Ps I’ll circle back with a photo essay on what I did between Magome and Kyoto soon. Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait.