This evening its raining in Tokyo, not the summer rainy season, just the sorta end of winter shower and on a little trip to the supermarket I did something that I’ve got completely used to. I put my umbrella into is little plastic baggy at the door, aka the condom. I’ve not yet lived through the rainy season but in Japan it rains just like every where else, so what do you do with thousands of people with umbrella’s walking around your store.

Well here they have come up with an ingenious solution (Jury is still on on how eco friendly, more on that later). Actually you have two choices. At the small stores there is a rack outsite the store where you place your umbrella. (oh I think I may be ahead of myself slightly, everyone and I mean everyone owns at least 1 umbrella. I have 3 at last count, and I am sure there a few somewhere from London, the other city of rain).

The great thing about Japan is that if you put your umbrella into the rack, it will be there when you get back. Honesty is such a great part of living here. I suppose there could be mix ups, but I’ve never seen it happen. The other option at larger store is the Umbrella condom machine. This is a machine that sits outside the door, you walk upto it, put the tip of you collasped umbrella into it, put all the way down, the pull forward. Suddenly you wet dripping brolly is now encapsulated in a drip proof plastic baggy. No dripping in the store.

After your little shopping jolly all you do when you walk out of the store is take you little baggy off and put in into the bin provided! How cool!

Now for the eco side of things. Well, all the plastic is collected back into special bins so it can be easily re-cycled. If that happens and I really hope it does. Also what is the cost of all the dripping and cleaning and chemicals mopping it all up, again I don’t know. So end of day maybe an issue, but damn it is cool