Here, there's no need for roosters.

They have all been replaced my mechanical ones that shout advertisements at you first thing in the morning.



Heads up, this isn't my video.  I can never get myself dressed fast enough to fly down 4 flights of stairs so that I can catch one of these suckers before they get out of my keitai's microphone range.  Though who am I kidding, that mic hears only me anyway.

So why first thing in the morning?  Why do this to you at the crack of dawn?

Because it's a garbage truck.  Naturally.

Remember, sorting and disposal of trash here in Tokyo is a big deal.  We have people coming nearly every day of the week to pick up something.
Mondays - burnables.
Wednesdays - paper and プラ(recyclable plastics (almost everything here is プラ)).
Thursday - burnables again.
Friday - non burnables, like batteries, metal, glass, porcelain shards.
Saturday - cans, glass and pet bottles.
You'd tend to think that means that you'd have everything covered.  However, disposal of anything that's larger than a breadbox requires someone to come and pick it up.  That's where these guys come in.

Every morning, somebody in the neighborhood needs to have a truck come out to take their oversized garbage away.  The city doesn't provide you with the service either.  Sure, they'll hook you up with somebody, but it's an independent group who charges you for their labor.  Since it's a business with some competition, you start seeing each contractor trying to reach out to the people in the neighborhood.
By waking them up with a loudspeaker mounted to a truck that stalks at 10 kilometers an hour down your road.  All throughout the day, every day, without fail.

However, like with birds, you learn to tune them out too.

Their HMV records store has free live music.

For the most part, you can't take pictures in stores, let alone take videos.  However, in a crowd as dense as this one was, we got away with it.





We've also passed by some street musicians in Shinjuku, but I found out that there's been a push to bring street performers into public stage houses.  When we touring Akihabara, we came across this place:

Dear Stage is a venue where up-and-coming singers perform before they become professional.  It affords people an opportunity to hear new talent, take pictures and autographs with them, and have a few drinks while you're at it.  I'm not suggesting this is an uncommon idea.  We have these everywhere in the states, but the ones I've seen have always been for bands and fringe groups.  This is for young female j-pop idols.  Or at least wannabe idols.  Now there's a niche that was wisely filed.

ILLNESS STRIKES

So I've been a bit under the weather lately.  A sinus cold, nothing serious.  But as a result of that, my drive to post has been under a luke warm tap.  No longer though!  I'm burning brightly with the desire to type.

Except we're dead smack in the middle of our first round of essays and tests at school.

I'll be posting some updates soon, once I get the deluge of work siphoned away.  Please look forward to it.