Random Japanese Stuff in Tokyo

During the time that I was living in Japan I fell in love with some of the quirky things that you find in Japan so I often go looking for them during my visits to Tokyo, here's a few that I found this time around that I really loved:

There is a statue of a peeing child on the yamanote line train platform, it's really random:





I also happened to come across a place on the top floor of the Tokyu Hands (a department store) in Ikebukuro that let's you rent cats, or more precisely rent time with cats. You pay 600 yen for an unlimited amount of time in the "cat house" which is literally three big rooms with 20-25 cats living in them. You can play with, pet and otherwise hang out with the cats for as long as you would like, it's like a cafe except it serves cats instead of coffee. Japanese apartments are very small and often have pet restrictions so you see things like this as solutions

People playing with the rental cats:

There are glassed in areas where the cats can go through cat doors and be away from people when they want a break from all the attention:

I also always laugh about the fact that I am WAY too tall for Japan, as can be seen in the photo of me on a bus below, my knees were about the same height as the head of the woman who had been sitting in front of me:


One thing I also always love to see are the vertical car garages, space is at a premium in Japan so you see a lot of garages like the one shown below. The cars are driven onto an elevator and then automatically put onto big shelves in the garage:


I also saw this sign, I took the photo from a moving train so it's a bit obscured, there are a lot of English speakers in Japan and unlike stereotypes the vast majority are pretty good, but you still do see some funny signs like the one below with reads:

"What is soul?
It's like electricity
We don't really know
what it is."