Cute Dinner Run

I felt like Mexican food for dinner, so I went out to pick up a few tacos.  On the way I saw these paired trash bins with cute ears.  One for ordinary refuse, the other for recyclables (the bins, not the ears^).

Or maybe they were meant to be protruding eyes, like the eyes of frogs and toads.

(I found this perfectly matching image online - how amazing is that!)

Then, on the way back after picking up the tacos I saw this Japanese izakaya with these vent pipes.  Ordinarily I find them slightly sinister, like giant serpents waiting to gobble up pigeons, but paired up like this I found them rather humorous for some reason... even "cute".

They reminded me of the periscope eyes of a mudskipper.

So kawaii, you might say.

How Cute

and funny!  A tiger cub sitting on the head of momma tigress -- Korean humor, y'all^

(Actually reminded me of this)

How Cute

Pastries in the shape of smiling little piggies!  With custard filling inside and bearing the letter 복 (pronounced "bok", and it means good fortune) on their backs.  Seen at an underground shopping mall in central Seoul.

[In East Asia pigs symbolize prosperity;  bok-dwe-ji ("good fortune pig") is an established idiom in the Korean language]

For instance, that sign over the back half of that pig is translatable as "Stroke the Golden Good Fortune Pig's rump for health and happiness"

"Hiruma"

A Japanese restaurant I came across.  The name ひるま  means "daytime".  But anyway, how kawaii!

So Japanese (take it any way you like -- I probably meant it that way 😉).

 

Funny, Then Sad

Or funny and sad, in two parts.  First, the funny (and cute) part:  I was just walking down an alley in an unfamiliar neighborhood, looking and photographing.  Then I came upon this building

with a pair of vent shafts behind a railing.  The pipes looked for all the world like a big brother and a little brother looking out a window, watching the world go by, perhaps pointing out interesting shapes in the clouds to each other.  Maybe this sounds a little odd, but they were "adorable" -- at least I found them so.

Now for the sad part.  While preparing those images to post them, I was reminded of something else, something truly heartrending.  Some time ago while cruising the internet I had come across these images of captive animals in a zoo, pining for the freedom that is rightfully theirs.  The murals of their former environs decorating their cells serve only to cruelly tantalize them -- they are "looking", but not "looking out".  I wonder if they know that they will never be free again.

How Adorable Is This

Found this old shot of a hummingbird doing its level best to blend in with the tree buds around it.  Even if it's probably just an accidentally assumed pose, the fact the buds are nearly the same size as the little guy brought a smile to my face.  There are no hummingbirds in Korea, so coming across this image from the past was a genuine pleasure.

Just A Cute Sweet Photo

of a little girl encountering a big bunny at Sinchon subway station.

I can post them, you know.  No engaging in weird solipsistic psycho-soliloquy or looking for cosmic meaning in my Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies.  Just a cute shot.

The Cult Of The Kawaii

This food delivery rider "gets" CUTE.