Only in Japan can rice slip into lice,
a single stroke transforming grain to parasite.
Here, warriors in suits wage corporate battles by day,
then collapse like origami cranes in rabbit-hutch apartments,
folded small against the neon night.
Only here will devil's tongue—that quivering konjac—
slide down throats with ceremonial slurp,
while soy sauce flows like ink from ancient brushes,
swallowed without a tremor, salt and umami baptism.
Yes, only in this archipelago of riddles
do youth drench themselves in Harajuku colors,
proclaiming themselves naïve and unformed—
while vending machines dispense beer labeled dry,
each contradiction a mirror reflecting another.
In the land where tradition bows to neon,
where silence screams and chaos whispers,
the rising sun illuminates a thousand paradoxes:
each one perfectly, impossibly Japanese.