Weekly challenge #1050 – Tokyo

The next topic is An empty cup

LISA

The Case of the Missing Baggage

Have you seen online where someone buys unclaimed baggage and then livestreams the opening to show what they got for the money? I tried it!
The gamble of Rolexes and Gucci belts or dirty pants and leaked suntan cream. My case was well travelled with a Tokyo sticker on the side. Oddly light when unpacked because it had a false bottom! Heroin: street Value in the millions. I thought that was my fortune made; except I’d livestreamed it so had to give the heroin, case and contents to the customs team that called round shortly after the video went viral.

RICHARD

Tokyo Drift

Tokyo isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, believe me.
Sure they have pedestrian crossings, trains that run on time, cherry blossoms and ramen… lots of delicious ramen.
And let’s not forget the maid cafes! Those are a whole lot of fun.
But there’s a downside to it also.
The working hours are long and you’re obliged to do them, and you don’t get extra pay for extra time.
The houses are small and prices are high, and don’t mention the traffic.
Not that any of that really bothers me much.
Being a Yakuza has its perks, get my drift?

SERENDIPIDY

The name’s evocative, isn’t it?
Bullet Train.
Two simple words that speak volumes. Speed and efficiency, punctuality and the striving for excellence.
If I were in Tokyo; but I’m not.
I’m in a quiet backwoods location, alongside a railway line; the rest of the gang are a little further along, waiting to rendezvous.
And the train is no passenger express, it’s the mail train, loaded with cash and gold.
I’ve changed the signal to red and the train is coming slowly to a stop.
I emerge from the shadows and take aim, as the driver steps down.
Bullet… meet train!

LEWIE

Title: Everything But the Tea

“I need to grab a bottle of tea”, the tourist said.

They stepped into a konbini. A selection of 30 rice balls caught their attention. After five minutes, they panicked and grabbed the only flavor they couldn’t identify, deciding to live life to its fullest and take a chance.

The little store in Tokyo had a better life organization than they did.

They picked up fried chicken, pudding, socks, and a phone charger.

“Would you want chopsticks, a spoon, a bag, a receipt, and heating?” the cashier asked.

So many questions, and overcome with a fear of forgetting something.

“Yes”

LIZZIE

He booked a trip to Japan. He wanted to visit Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe. He wanted to just sit and enjoy the beauty of the cherry blossoms. So, he landed in Tokyo. He was hungry. He went to a street vendor and sat down to eat. And he stayed. He ate and stayed some more. The food was so good, Kyoto and everywhere else would have to wait. A few months later, he moved to Tokyo, and his life changed. Strange guys with massive tattoos hired him to be a bouncer. He’d do anything for that food, even go to jail.

TOM

My Woman From Tokyo

Uncle Bob loved to tell tales of his time in China during the war. His job was to guard high value Japanizes prisoner. After VJ day he continues this work in Tokyo. This is how he met Iva Toguri the voice of Zero Hour, Tokyo Rose. Uncle Bob was her guard and they become good friends. When Iva was released from prison she settled in Chicago. She and my uncle remained friends until his death in 1981. He always spoke highly of her and thought the government had treated her unfairly. I think he might have had a crush on her.

NORVAL JOE

Pinkerton turned to Joan. “Where do you think they are?”

Joan shrugged. “Last we saw, Mr. Yaan was being carried out to sea by a tornado. He’s probably halfway to Tokyo by now.”

Ms. Pinkerton’s face went bright red. She snarled, “Don’t mock me.”

“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” Joan said, recognizing only her superpower might save them and a veil of efficiency spread around them. “Patrick and Bobby Yaan can verify this.”

“Okay, bit it’s late,” Pinkerton said. “We can meet at the Yaan’s house tomorrow morning, say 9:00?”

Joan nodded and shuttled Sabrina back to her car.

PLANET Z

Just as I was waking up and making a cup of coffee, I knew that my coworker in Japan was coming home from a night out in the Tokyo clubs. He usually left an encouraging message and a stack of code changes that I needed to test and document. However, this night there was a ransom note and a photo of a bloody finger. They wanted access to the code base, but my coworker refused to enter the password. Company policy is to notify our security team so I did. I finished my coffee, sat in my chair, and prayed.

Institute

The art institute sent out invitations to artists every year to display their works at the annual Queen’s Show.
Submissions came in to the dock around the clock.
The curators cataloged each piece, then the head curator would determine where it would go.
To “sky” a piece meant putting it high up on a wall, while “on the line” put it at the visitors’ eyeline.
The best art went into the front hall at the eyeline, while the worst went up into the sky of the backrooms.
Well, the ones that didn’t disappear from the dock and into the night.

Register them all

Most superpowered individuals register with their respective governments. Some governments are more open about their members than others are, but all of them hold back a few names. Whether you call them heroes or villains, it all depends on the circumstance, I guess. And some individuals prefer the vigilante track. There is no global registry, so sometimes there’s two or three records for the same person or different translations of their name. So, what you have there is Captain Cyclone from Sri Lanka, not Captain Hurricane from old New Orleans, we can bring you in peacefully or not. Your choice.

Grabber

A friend of mine has been having hip problems for years.
Still, she has to pick up after her husband and grandkids, because they never clean up after themselves.
She’s finally gotten surgery for her hips, and they hurt like hell, but they will feel a lot better with painkillers, rest, and physical therapy.
Her family got her one of those grabber arms that she can use to pick things up from her temporary walker and wheelchair.
Instead, she uses it to point at things for them to pick up.
And if they don’t, she whacks them with the grabber.

OCD trash

I put vibration sensors on my trashcan and recycling bin so I know when they have been collected. That way I can go out and wheel them back up the driveway. I set the sensors only to go off on the mornings that they’re supposed to be collected. However, if I have a late bag of trash or collection of cans to recycle, dumping them in the bin that morning will set off the sensor. The only person that bothers is me, so I should probably just disable the sensors and relax a bit. Life isn’t graded on a curve.

Get up and walk

When I go for my walk in the morning, I can choose between turning left and turning right at the main road Left allows me to take the short path through the trees and I’m done in 15 minutes. Or I can just keep going and head out to the Main route for another 5 to 10 minutes walk. If I turn right, I can walk the path through the abandoned golf course that was turned into a park. But that takes me about 30 or 40 minutes. In the end, it’s just important that I get up and walk and get my ass moving.

Grade inflation

Now that colleges can’t use standardized tests because they’re racist or sexist or something, they have to figure out if a student GPA of 4.7 is legitimate or just inflated bullshit from the football factory high school. This is why colleges write no refunds on the admissions form. And to add to the turnover, they gave up an offering remedial math, remedial English, and pretty much remedial everything else. The few people who managed to graduate did so with useless degrees in psychology, sociology, gender studies, race studies, and other worthless pieces of paper in the job marketplace. Society collapsed.

Weekly challenge #1049 – PICK TWO Buffering, Update, An old postcard, offensive, Roll

The next topic is Tokyo

LIZZIE

Dear You,
Here’s an unrequested update that will cause a sudden flare-up of indigestion, I know.
He took everything. The jewels, the money, even the hand-painted dishes no one liked.
He did leave a rather offensive note behind that I’ll refrain from copying here.
Now, how do you want to roll? Shall we hunt him down or simply ignore him?
Crazy question, I know. I can hear your swearing from the future. I know your answer.
I’ve gathered a team. I know where he hangs out.
Meet you at the usual place. Tomorrow, midnight.
Bring the meat grinder.
Yours truly.

RICHARD

Wish you were here
I was clearing out the loft. The usual rubbish collected over the years, most of it useless; some bound for charity shops, one or two items worth salvaging and the rest destined for the tip.
Amongst some old newspapers, I rediscovered the relics of a childhood family holiday, including an old postcard.
It was the typical British seaside affair, a cartoon of a busty babe in a bikini, buying an ice-cream.
“I’d like a large one, please. I do like a good long licking!”
Harmless fun, back in the day.
But, I’ve no doubt, hugely offensive to modern sensibilities.

TOM

From the Lost Room

For many years I have been on a great scavenger’s hunt. It was connected to the tv show “The Lost Room”. One of the items of the collection was a painting of an old oak tree. In the fore-ground of the painting was on odd shape stone. After much searching, I learned the oak in question had been on the U of C campus in Berkley. Figured the paint might have some source image. So, I found an old postcard from 1915 which pretty much matched the painting. Written on the card was an update about a trip to Oakland.

SERENDIPIDY

I was struggling with the latest Windows update.
For an hour I’d watched the spinning wheel on the screen: buffering constantly, without a care in the world.
I was in a hurry. I had work to do, I was up against a deadline… But the technology didn’t care and it was taking its own good time to mess me about.
With each circle of the wheel I could feel my stress levels growing.
This was exactly what the shrink had warned me about.
I glanced at the semi-automatic at my side.
Anger, or the update; which would it be?

NORVAL JOE

Old Doris Grindlebomb was 92 when her family took her keys away. No, they weren’t the keys to her Cadillac convertible. There was no way in hell they were gonna take those away from her no matter how blind she was. Or, blind drunk. It was the keys to piano that they took away. For 70 years, she had been the music teacher at the local elementary school, and they would’ve retired her long ago if anyone else had wanted the job. She switched to the saxophone. She was so bad at it, they gave her the piano keys back.

PLANET Z

Old Doris Grindlebomb was 92 when her family took her keys away. No, they weren’t the keys to her Cadillac convertible. There was no way in hell they were gonna take those away from her no matter how blind she was. Or, blind drunk. It was the keys to piano that they took away. For 70 years, she had been the music teacher at the local elementary school, and they would’ve retired her long ago if anyone else had wanted the job. She switched to the saxophone. She was so bad at it, they gave her the piano keys back.

George and the cure

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate. The rare times his captain gave him a mission, he’d fail it miserably. But when the entire crew came down with a plague and George was the only man spared, the captain begrudgingly sent George out to obtain a rare flower to brew a tea to cure the malady. George set out that day in the longboat, landing on a tropical island. He found a clearing with many flowers, and he brought them back to the ship… too late. He made wreaths of the flowers and held many funerals.

One light town

The mayor never liked it when people called Centerville, a one traffic light town. So he had the traffic light removed and replaced with a four-way stop. And the accident rate didn’t change that much, considering that there were never any accidents in the town. You thought about putting in a traffic circle. Things that he read on the Internet said that traffic circles were safer, but it was a small intersection already and didn’t need all the ruckus to build up the traffic circle. Although putting some flowers or a flag pole in the round would’ve looked nice.