I need to practice my calligraphic dots and circles, so today’s character comes from Braille.

Did you know that Braille is slightly different in every language? The twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet are generally the same across languages, but beyond that there is a lot of variation. For example, I wrote ⠩, which represents:

• the digraph “sh” or the word “shall” in English Braille,
• sounds similar to “sh” in Devanagari Braille (श) and Arabic Braille (ش),
• the accented letter î in French Braille,
• the digraph “ei” in German Braille and its equivalent “ει” in Greek Braille, and
• nothing at all in Spanish Braille!

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean have their own entirely independent Brailles. The symbol ⠩ represents the syllable く (ku) in Japanese Braille, the final “yan” in Mainland Chinese Braille, and the vowel ㅠ (yu) in Korean Braille.

I visited the Ochanomizu Origami Kaikan (お茶の水おりがみ会館) as a fun little diversion in Tōkyō. The centre is part shop, part school, and part studio. I got to take some photos of the paper-dying process and took home some supplies that might inspire me to make some more origami soon!

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Origami paper can be dyed, painted, or both depending on the intended pattern. When I visited, the artisan was using a special multi-headed brush to paint green stripes on one side of the paper; the other side had already been painted gold using a very wide, soft brush to achieve a consistent finish. The result is a pattern perfect for folding into snake decorations for the upcoming new year!

As you might have guessed from an earlier post, I have acquired a minor obsession with the colours of fire hydrants. You can bet I had my eyes peeled in Japan to see how hydrants look there — and the answer was fascinating!

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The first things I noticed in Tōkyō were the round red signs everywhere indicating the presence of a fire hydrant (消火栓)… and a distinct lack of fire hydrants.

It turns out that hydrants in Japan are generally installed underground except in particularly snow-prone areas. The signs point to the plate on the road or sidewalk that covers the hydrant cap.

Many parks and private property also have fire cisterns (防火水槽) and other water conservancies (消防水利) that store water to fight fires after a major earthquake, when the main water network may be damaged.

Hoses, pumps, and other fire suppression equipment are scattered throughout the city so that trained residents and disaster volunteers can use them to suppress fires during a major disaster.1

Footnotes

Credit card terminals in Japan are pretty similar to those in Canada — you can use tap (タッチ) or insert your card and enter your PIN to authorize the transaction. But there’s one twist that confused me at first. If you need to enter your PIN on a touchscreen, the numbers on the number pad are displayed in a random order!

I have no idea if this is unique to Japan or if it’s just new to me, but it does seem like a helpful security feature to ensure that your PIN can’t be guessed later based on the fingerprint smudges on the screen.

Calligraphy is one of several hobbies I’ve started dabbling with. I’m practicing by writing information sheets for random Unicode characters, which gives me an excuse to share some typographic trivia!

Today’s entry is U+237C RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW, also known as angzarr. This is an unusual “ghost character” that nobody knows the meaning of. Jonathan Chan has an ongoing series of blog posts tracing the history of the character to the Monotype foundry between 1954 and 1963, but is no closer to discovering the original purpose.

When I stopped by the Nintendo store in Kyōto, I knew I needed to get an product with the company’s oldest mascot on it. No, I don’t mean Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, or even Mr. Game and Watch. I’m talking about… Napoleon Bonaparte?

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If you weren’t aware, the Nintendo corporation is much older than video games. It was originally founded in 1889 (Meiji 22) to produce hanafuda cards (花札) — which it still makes today!

A hanafuda deck consists of twelve suits of four cards each, all with abstract designs (originally to evade Edo-era anti-gambling laws). The cards are much thicker than western playing cards (トランプ) but are about a third of the size.

As shown above, Nintendo’s hanafuda come in a box with Napoleon’s portrait on it. That has been the case since at least 1901 (Meiji 34), although the company once had many other brands of cards featuring other historical figures like Saigō Takamori (西鄕 隆盛) and fanciful designs like tengu (天狗).

It’s not clear why Napoleon was chosen, why he got top billing, or why he remains the face of hanafuda today. One theory suggests it was copied or acquired from an American brand, which in turn may have been named after an English card game, but this is purely conjecture.

Footnotes

Before we left for Japan, I tried my hand at making my own stamp to use on the cover page of my eki stamp book. I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt!

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The stamp is made out of a 1/8” thick rubber gasket material. I used an X-Acto knife to carve it into a stylized rose design, glued it onto a wooden coaster, and sanded it down a bit to allow ink to stick to it.

While in Japan, I dabbled in the perfect hobby for obsessive-compulsive travellers like myself: stamp collecting!

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All over the country, train stations have distinctive rubber stamps (駅スタンプ) for travellers to mark their stampbooks with to commemorate their journey. These really took off in the 1970s1 when Japanese National Railways installed stamps at 1400 stations as part of its DISCOVER JAPAN campaign.

Prior to then, stamps were already offered at a handful of individual stations; enthusiasts had been collecting commemorative postmarks since the late Meiji era (1900s-1910s). An even earlier tradition had temples and shrines award stamps called goshuin (御朱印) as a proof of pilgrimage for their devotees.

With that said, here are the stamps I collected on our recent trip!

JR West stamps

I collected four classic stamps from JR West’s stations in Kanazawa and Kyōto.

JR East stamps

I absolutely love JR East’s refreshed 2020 stamp designs for its Tōkyō stations. Each incorporates one character of the station’s name with some distinctive feature of the surrounding neighbourhood. I collected six stamps from the Yamanote line (山手線) and one from the Chūō line (中央本線).

Tourist stamps (記念スタンプ)

Train stations aren’t the only places you can get stamps. Tourist information centres at major destinations often have their own stamps for visitors, and even some stores participate in limited-time stamp rallies.

Goshuin

Stamp collecting in Japan is at least informed by, if not directly descended from, the practice of receiving goshuin (御朱印) on a pilgrimage to a temple or shrine. Conversely, goshuin were influenced by the success of stamp collecting: many sects offer them to collectors and other travellers for a small donation, regardless of faith.

I had one goshuin entered into my stampbook at Honnōji (本能寺) in Kyōto.

Footnotes

Leah and I are back from a three-week trip to Japan! It was my first trip to the country, and only my second time away from North America. Over the next few months, you can expect plenty of posts with photos, observations, and souvenirs from the trip.

For now, here’s an overview of our itinerary and some initial thoughts of how it went.

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Tōkyō (東京)

We started the trip with four full days in Tōkyō. I was worried I’d be totally overwhelmed, but I was pleasantly surprised by how manageable it was. Part of that was location: our hotel in the centrally-located but less hectic neighbourhood around Ōtemachi (大手町) and Kanda (神田) provided a home base for us to retreat to.

But even the busiest areas of Shibuya (渋谷), Ginza (銀座), and Ikebukuro (池袋) were not as bad as I expected. It turns out that thousands of pedestrians and tens of vehicles is not much more of a sensory overload than an urban experience with hundreds of each.

We mostly stuck to the central core of Tōkyō within the Yamanote Line (JY 山手線) and took advantage of our central location on several metro lines:

• Marunouchi (Ⓜ 丸ノ内線)
• Ginza (Ⓖ 銀座線)
• Hanzōmon (Ⓩ 半蔵門線)
• Chiyoda (Ⓒ 千代田線)
• Tōzai (Ⓣ 東西線)

I’m very glad I studied the geography and metro lines of Tōkyō before I left!

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Kanazawa (金沢)

After we had our fill of Tōkyō, we took the Hokuriku Shinkansen (北陸新幹線) to Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture (石川県) on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The city is home to roughly half a million people and many traditional arts and crafts dating from the Edo era.

In our three days in Kanazawa, we stayed in the historic Higashiyama (東山) teahouse district and took a bunch of craft workshops I’ll cover in future posts.

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Kyōto (京都)

The final leg of our trip was five days in Kyōto. The cultural capital is home to lots of historic landmarks and is ground zero for Japan’s challenges for overtourism. Our itinerary was focused more on Kyōto’s traditional crafts than the major tourist destinations, and it became even more so as we adjusted our plans to account for travel fatigue.

With hindsight, it would have been better to plan a slightly shorter trip and stay somewhere on the Karasuma subway line (烏丸線) rather than the tourist-heavy Gion district (祇園), but we still had a very nice time.

The highlight of Kyōto for me was definitely the railway museum — more on that in a future post.

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Food

It is cliché to talk about all the amazing food one eats on a trip, but this has historically been challenging for me since I have a bit of a fragile stomach.1 Fortunately, Japan is full of food that is tasty and easy on the stomach, so our trip was both gastronomically and gastrointestinally satisfying!

Our favourite go-to meals were cold soba (そば) for Leah and unajū (鰻重) for me, although we also had excellent yakitori (焼き鳥), okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), oyakodon (親子丼), shrimp omurice (オムライス), and grilled salmon teishoku (鮭定食).2 I definitely missed my daily serving of peanut butter, but Japan’s famously incredible convenience stores (コンビニ) made up for it by providing snacks and reasonable emergency meals.

Language

It’s been a hot minute since I studied Japanese in university, but I was very thankful for my basic vocabulary and ability to read hiragana, katakana, and a handful of kanji. I’m sure it’s possible to visit Japan without knowing any of the language — million of tourists do it every month — but language was so core to our experience that I have a hard time imagining it.

Multilingual signage can be found everywhere at major attractions, in many restaurants, and on public transportation.3 But it’s a lot more efficient to be able to read and listen for directions in multiple languages, especially in smaller places where the English versions might be slightly dubious.4

I was surprised at how much value I got just from having a working knowledge of katakana. Japanese has a lot of English loanwords, to the point that you can navigate many stores just by sounding things out. At a drugstore, you might see my lips move as I read スキンクリーム as su-ki-n-ku-ri-i-mu — oh, this is skin cream!

People were universally very complimentary of our Japanese skills — not because we were any good, necessarily, but because we were showing consideration by putting in the effort. And they were more than willing to meet us halfway by simplifying their own speech, dropping in English words they knew, and being patient with us. There were a few very special interactions and experiences we were able to have in Japanese, and I’m very grateful to everyone we met for accommodating us.

Back home

We had a wonderful trip, but it’s great to be back home in our own bed with our cat and our routine. I’m sure we’ll be back one day, although it might take a few years to work up the energy for another trip of that length. Until then, I hope you’ll excuse me using this website to look back on my experiences for the next little while!

Footnotes

The Pythagorean theorem states that, for a right triangles with side lengths $a, b$ and hypotenuse $c$:

$$a^2 + b^2 = c^2.$$

There are many proofs, but my favourite for its geometric simplicity is the following proof by rearrangement.

The popular image of a tall, narrow iceberg is wrong:

While it’s true that only ~ 10% floats above the surface of the water, the “classic” orientation is unstable and would actually not be found in nature. An elongated iceberg would not float on its head, but instead on its side.

Megan Thompson-Munson

Generally, icebergs will float so their long axis is parallel to the ocean surface. See for yourself with this iceberg flotation simulator!

The British Foreign Secretary recently announced an agreement that will restore sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelagoto Mauritius. I don’t have enough context to understand what this means to the Chagossians in exile, but I can say this has huge implications for geography trivia — the sun will finally set on the British Empire for the first time in over four centuries!

This news may also have a big impact on the internet. Up until now, the Chagos Islands were part of an entity called the British Indian Ocean Territory, which was assigned the country code IO and the top-level domain .io. Domains ending in .io have become popular in the tech world: high-profile examples include CodePen, Swagger and Jenkins, the official Rust package repository, the Azure Container Registry, and lots of GitHub Pages sites.

When the British Indian Ocean Territory ceases to exist, IANA policy says that all .io domains should also be eventually extinguished, as happened with .yu and .cs. However, the .su top-level domain still exists for the Soviet Union, so it would not be unprecedented for IANA to make an exception and keep .io around.

Today is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. With the day off comes an opportunity (and responsibility) to learn about residential schools, through which the federal government and Canadian churches separated children from their families and subjected them to abuse and neglect in loco parentis.

[R]econciliation, in the context of Indian residential schools, is similar to dealing with a situation of family violence.

Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Although the first residential schools were first established pre-Confederation, their story is shockingly and depressingly recent: residential school populations were at their highest from the 1920s to the 1960s, and some continued to operate well into my own childhood.

In 2007, New Zealand paint company Resene decided to name this specific shade of teal “zomp”.

The Kama Sutra (कामसूत्र) is an ancient Hindu text about sensory pleasure. Although it’s best known in English for its most risqué chapters, it also contains a list of sixty-four arts whose knowledge makes a person popular and attractive.

1. Singing.
2. Playing on musical instruments.
3. Dancing.
…
28. A game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker’s verse ended, whoever failed to repeat was considered to have lost

Kama Sutra, Chapter 3

In modern times, the twenty-eighth art is primarily practiced by bored children on road trips and is known by many names like word chain or shiritori. I had no idea it was over 1700 years old!

The word “distribute” is etymologically the opposite of “tribute”.

early 15c., distributen, “to deal out or apportion, bestow in parts or in due proportion,” from Latin distributus, past participle of distribuere “to divide, deal out in portions,” from dis- “individually” and tribuere “to pay, assign, grant,” also “allot among the tribes or to a tribe,” from tribus (see tribe)

In geography, a tributary is a stream or river that feeds into a larger body of water; for example, the Thompson River (Snek’w7étkwe) is a tributary of the Fraser (Sto:lo). When a river bifurcates into multiple downstream branches, such as the North and South Arms of the Fraser, those branches are called distributaries.

In case you ever have need for a large-ish prime number, here are a few that are easy to remember:

• 314159 ($\lfloor \pi \cdot 10^5 \rfloor$)
• 8675309 (Jenny’s number)
• 1000000007 (a billion and seven)
• 2147483647 ($2^{31}-1$, i.e. INT_MAX)
• 11111111111111111111111 (twenty-three ones)
• 1000000000000066600000000000001 (Belphegor’s prime)

Diggy, my best furry friend of twelve years, passed away this week. He was full of sass, love, energy, mischief, curiosity, and affection, and will be deeply missed.

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Diggy was found as a kitten on the streets of Kamloops in 2012, and Leah and I took him in on November 1. As soon as he was out of the carrier, Diggy was wandering around our apartment like he owned the place. Diggy slept on the bed between the two of us the very first night we had him.

Diggy was a cat full of mischief. Under his watch, no bag would be left unoccupied, no nook would stay unexplored, and no paper would remain unchewed. Diggy zoomed around as a kitten, usually ending with a parkour climb up our bathroom door jamb and once leaving me to shower in the dark after he caught the light switch on the way down. Diggy slowed down later in life but was no less of a brat, climbing on counters, getting water all over his face, and yowling at night to report he had found his favourite toy.

Cats have their people, and I was Diggy’s person. The two of us were inseparable: first thing in the morning and last thing at night Diggy would hop into the bed to snuggle. If I sat down on the couch to read or play video games, he would force himself onto my chest and nuzzle my face. And any time I called his name, he would trot over with a purr that could be heard across the room.

In 2018 we adopted our second cat, and Diggy became a big brother. Although Diggy and Pazzo were never super close, they were true partners in crime. The two frequently played together: grooming, wrestling, racing down the hall, or batting at one another from different heights of furniture. For a while we kept the office door closed to protect its contents from the cats, but despite our best efforts Diggy would break in and Pazzo would follow to make mischief.

Diggy was constantly making us laugh and smile. He was a true master of the “blep” technique as shown in the photos below. And his dedication to “flumping” came with it a complete disregard for gravity; he has been known to do an unintentional barrel roll right off a piece of furniture.

All in all, Diggy was an adorable cat, full of sass, love, energy, mischief, curiosity, and affection. He brought Leah and I together as a family and brightened up our lives and our home. Diggy was the first cat I ever had, and I was incredibly lucky to have had such a special relationship with him.

You know what a fire hydrant looks like. You pass by them every day, and they’re all painted to be a highly visible red. Or is it yellow? Wait, maybe they have other colours on them too?

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If the subject of fire hydrant colours has ever crossed your mind, you might have assumed (as I did) that they’d be covered somewhere in the Fire Code. In fact, the code is completely silent on hydrant colours, and it’s up to individual municipalities and their fire departments to decide how hydrants should be painted. This leaves a lot of room for variation!

Even setting aside exceptional cases — like downtown Quesnel’s artistic hydrants, or that time an Abbotsford neighbourhood got gold-plated hydrants — there’s a wide variety in the colour schemes used across municipalities in BC.

The non-standard standard

A document called NFPA 291, published by the US-based National Fire Protection Association, is the closest thing there is to a standard fire hydrant colour scheme. It recommends that:

[P]ublic hydrant barrels are to be colored their characteristic chrome yellow. … The tops and nozzle caps are also painted under a capacity-indicating color scheme to provide simplicity and consistency. This scheme consists of Light Blue [for hydrants that can pump 1500 gallons per minute], Green [1000-1499 gpm], Orange [500-999 gpm], and Red [less than 500 gpm].

ANSI, describing NFPA 291

Although many NFPA standards are incorporated into the Canadian Fire Code, the NFPA 291 colour scheme is purely voluntary.

Many municipalities incorporate the recommended flow rate colours into their hydrant designs, but only a few — notably Kelowna, Chilliwack, and Merritt — implement the full standard including the chrome yellow body.

Vancouver

In the city of Vancouver, most fire hydrants are painted entirely red. Each hydrant has a label indicating the flow rate (as per the NFPA 291 colour code) and an alphanumeric identifier that can be looked up on the on the city website to find the make, model, and installation date.

Downtown, you’ll also see fire hydrants of a different colour. These large blue hydrants are part of the Dedicated Fire Protection System, an auxiliary network that can supply enough water pressure to reach the tops of high-rise buildings. The network was built to withstand magnitude 8 earthquakes after the successful use of a similar system in San Francisco.

Fire hydrants on Vancouver’s Dedicated Fire Protection System are blue with white trim.

Burnaby

The city of Burnaby might have a claim to the province’s most distinctive fire hydrants. Their red, white, and green colour scheme isn’t found anywhere else in BC.

The Burnaby tricolour apparently only applies to public hydrants. The shopping centres at Market Crossing, for example, installed boring red fire hydrants on their parking lots.

Kamloops

My hometown of Kamloops paints its hydrants yellow with a white bonnet.

The largest port of a Kamloops hydrant exhibits another colour code that can be found across the province. The main cap can either be yellow or black depending on whether it is threaded or uses a Storz connection.

Hope

Downtown Hope’s red hydrants have little antennae attached to make them more visible, especially in cases of heavy snow.

Across BC

As much as I’d like to travel around the province taking pictures of fire hydrants, this post needs to be published at some point. I therefore took to Google Street View to survey fire hydrants in each of the 75 most populous BC municipalities.

Municipality	Body	Cap	Bonnet
Abbotsford1	⚪ White	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Armstrong	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Burnaby	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🟢 Green
Campbell River	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Castlegar	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Central Sannich	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Chilliwack	🟡 Yellow	NFPA2	NFPA
Coldstream	🟡 Yellow	⚫ Black	🟡 Yellow
Colwood	⚪ White	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Comox	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Coquitlam	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Courtenay	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Cranbrook	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Creston	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Dawson Creek	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Delta	⚪ White	⚪ White	NFPA
Esquimalt	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue
Fernie	🔴 Red	Silver	Silver
Fort St John	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Hope	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Kamloops3	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	⚪ White
Kelowna	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Kent	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Kimberley	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Kitimat	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Ladysmith	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Lake Country	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Langford	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Langley	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Maple Ridge	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Merritt	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Mission	🟡 Yellow	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Nanaimo	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Nelson	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
New Westminister	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
North Cowichan	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
North Sannich	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
North Vancouver	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Oak Bay	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Osoyoos	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Parksville	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Peachland	🔴 Red	NFPA	NFPA
Penticton	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Pitt Meadows	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Port Alberni	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Port Coquitlam	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Port Moody	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Powell River	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Prince George	🟡 Yellow	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Prince Rupert	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Qualicum Beach	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Quesnel	Decorated	Decorated	Decorated
Revelstoke	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green	🟢 Green
Richmond	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Saanich	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Salmon Arm	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green
Sechelt	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🟢 Green
Sidney	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Smithers	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Sooke	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Squamish	🔴 Red	⚫ Black	🔵 Blue
Summerland	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Surrey4	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Terrace	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Trail	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Vancouver	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Vernon	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	⚪ White
Victoria	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
View Royal	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🔴 Red
West Kelowna	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
West Vancouver	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Whistler	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
White Rock	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Williams Lake	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green	🟢 Green

The above table is not foolproof. It is hard to tell, for example, whether Williams Lake has adopted a uniform yellow-and-green colour scheme for aesthetic reasons or it just happens to have a lot of 1000 gpm hydrants painted according to NFPA 291.

I also saw one instance of a hydrant in Comox that appears either yellow or red in Street View depending on the angle; one image was taken in 2012 and the other in 2022, and the hydrant had apparently been repainted in the interim.

Conclusion

Fire hydrant colours are left to each municipality, and frequently lack public documentation. I’ve done a quick survey of what’s out there, but I’ve surely missed many exceptions, oddities, and quirks in each municipality. Pay attention to the hydrants in your neighbourhood and you’ll surely notice something interesting!

Footnotes

Most ice cream trucks in Canada and the United States use music boxes made by a single mom-and-pop company in Minneapolis. If there’s a particular ice cream truck song that annoys you all summer, you have the Nichols Electronics Company to blame.

(You could always ask the your local driver if they’re able to switch it up — if they have one of the Omni models, they could change it to one of thirty-one other songs.)

Historically, ice cream truck music boxes were a sonic callback to late 19th-century ice cream parlors and soda fountains, which had coin-operated music boxes before phonographs were invented and jukeboxes could become a thing.