Hello, wonderful and amazing readers, and welcome to your favorite look at all things random in the land of the rising sun, Random Japan!

Today, a strange Japlish sign.

Ready to see what I’m talking about? Great! Let’s get started. Let’s enter into…

Boy, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Sorry, this year has been incredibly busy so far, much more than last year when I actually had free time once in a while. But today I took a walk. And on this relaxing walk I noticed a strange sign.

I think we can all guess the intended meaning. This is from Okazaki Castle. Normally the castle gets a lot of tourists, so looking at your smartphone while walking is a bad idea, esp with the many castle moats and ditches that folks can fall into and get hurt.

But it’s not just normal tourism. The past few years it has been even busier than usual in this area because Pokemon Go made this a hot spot for some special pokemon. I’ve talked to tourists who traveled quite a long way only to catch the pokemon. Crazy.

So yes, smartphone zombies are now a normal part of the landscape here, people walking around all day just staring at their phones and doing strange flicking motions as they try to catch the imaginary creatures. I wonder what the ghosts of the samurai who once walked this very ground think of this.

At any rate—Danger Walk Smartphone!

That’s all, folks. Thank you for staying with me through today’s exploration of our modern smartphone zombie problem. And be sure to turn in next time when, if providence allows and if I don’t fall prey to some pokemon-seeking zombie, I shall return for another Random Japan. See you then!