The Mainichi Daily News never disappoints me. Today I found a photo essay on Japanese ice cream flavors. The flavors range from wasabi to corn to eel. Octopus ice cream was one of my favorites:

Want to tantalize the taste buds with a tentacle? If so, Octopus Ice Cream is the go. Japanese have been able to come up with an amazing variety of uses for octopus, ranging from delicacy to porno movie prop. Little wonder that octopus has found its way into ice cream, then.

The Photo Essays page also has a currently running memoir on the period 1995-1999. Listed among the "personalities of the period" are the Japanese high-school girls, whom the Mainichi suggests are the most powerful economic force in Japan. Their buying power was apparently drawn from their parents' income, but the Mainichi also says

Many supplemented their pocket money by flogging their supple young bodies to older men through enjo kosai, a euphemism for prostitution that literally translates as compensated dating. Many of the enjo kosai girls graduated to the dyed yellow hair, miniskirt-clad, platform-shoe wearing young women highly visible on most of the nation's streets.

I'm afraid that if I go to Japan I will be stricken with a permanent face of bewilderment.