Of course we have our own milk delivery boxes. Ours are metal with a bit of insulation and they're no less decorated than the Japanese boxes but somehow Amusing Planet finds Japanese milk delivery boxes more charming. Their photography indicates the surrounding architecture is part of the alluring charm.
But so is ours. I imagine our surrounding home architecture and landscaping is interesting to Japanese.
Our delivery boxes are so charming and so useful beyond milk deliveries that one summer, when I was in kindergarten, at early evening through dusk when the fireflies were active in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, where Jesus was born, so I thought at the time, I caught a dozen or so lightning bugs and saved them in the milk box on the porch. I thought they'd be fun to keep and that was the handiest container. Pretty good plan. Don't you think? The next morning to my dismay the bugs were all dead.
What a bummer!
Oh, some were still kind of alive, sort of, but they weren't lighting up like they did the evening before.
The Japanese boxes are okay. But Amusing Planet neglected to tell us what the words on the boxes mean. That's a big part of their alluring decoration. Just as our lettering is to them. If anything, after this you'll be able to recognize the kanji characters for "cow, beef, and the like," and for "milk."
Not everything is kanji. You'll see it on packages and signs. The other systems of writing are symbols for sounds. Sometimes they're mixed. Just like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Sometimes they stand for the thing and sometimes they stand for the sound of the word for the thing. So you must speak the language to write it. The sound systems have a lot fewer characters. One such system is called hiragana. And the place name on one of the boxes is Hirogano. The hiragana system is designated with a character shaped like a U. See this. An abbreviation. They don't bother writing the remaining sounds for their word for the system of sounds. And that's an odd shape in Kanji right off. The place name Hirogano, a ski resort, I think, such as Alta, but not nearly so spectacular, begins with the same character.
More Japanese wooden home delivery milk boxes and more words describing the milk delivery industry at Amusing Planet.
8 comments:
Funny, I didn't realize the Japanese drank milk. I thought they lactose intolerant. And, in case, didn't have the room for large dairy herds.
BTW, this reminds me of the dullest man I ever met - while traveling on the cross country train from Chicago to LA.
Unless you're part of a group of 4, they put you with strangers for lunch and dinner (4 to a table). Anyway, this dullard was seated at my table for lunch and dinner.
He talked constantly about his antique milk bottle collection. Ignoring his 3 eating companions, every attempt at other topics was derailed into his favorite topic. How much each bottle cost, how he'd snookered others into selling bottles for cheap, or conversely how he unloaded his antique milk bottles for twice their value.
He did have other hobbies though. He buzzed around on his Skidoo and admired himself in the mirror.
And the point? Chip makes Japanese milk delivery boxes fascinating. So, its
not the subject, its the speaker, that makes the difference.
EBL bait
True thing: We get milk delivered every week and have for quite awhile. That regionally local producer/provider has gotten together with other regionally local producer/providers of other products as well, and so there are all sorts of things that can be delivered. There are a number of items that we purchase in this way: for the most part, the products are of superior quality. This past summer into fall, there was experimentation with produce boxes, as well, and we supported that for a while, until it stopped a couple of weeks ago. This worked out mostly exceptionally well for us, on balance (I mean, nothing's perfect, and always there will be glitches with startup things).
It has been great getting milk/dairy that fresh on our delivery every day week.
(No, it's not the same as when I was a kid and the milkman was around all of the time, not just weekly, where I was raised in flyover country. That said, I was shocked--then intrigued--then pleased when I discovered there'd been some revival of dairy delivery a number of years back in the area where we now live. So I signed up, and we have been customers for a few years now.
... And we do enjoy the slogan: "24-48 Hours from Moo to You.)
Chickelit: EBL double-bait?
I just remembered the harangue Lewis Black does (or did) on Moo Cow Milk, as opposed to all the other faux milks, like Soy Milk, that are now available and how being confronted with all those choices drives him crazy.
"He talked constantly about his antique milk bottle collection"
Really? I am always talking about milk containers. Not bottles though. You know what I mean.
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