A lot has happened since my last post. The laughably named "Liberal Democratic Party" has lost power for the first time since the Ordovician period, Patrick Swayze died, and my soul got just a little bit blacker and more evil as a result of one or both of these. Most importantly, my regular comment correspondent Bob has informed me that cafeterias across Japan have started selling bowls of icy cold PAIN for a mere 80 yen each. This is good news as it takes regular doses of pain to remind my tiny shriveled bitter heart to keep beating. Fortunately a bowl of pain is only 43 calories, so I can eat the stuff all day and still keep my girlish figure.
OK, seriously, what is the story? Well, in Japan the word for "pineapple" is more or less "pineapple". This is usually abbreviated to "pine" though, and phonetically spelled パイン. Reverse engineering these characters back into English using standard romanization spelling yields "pain". Pineapple=Pain. I leave the details to your imagination.
(Photo credit: Bob, a.k.a. Dr. K, a.k.a. The Pilao!!!)
