These are not the ninjas you are looking for

I'm just going to pretend like I haven't been missing for a week and get on with posting as if nothing had happened. I'm definitely not going to suggest that I was kidnapped by a secret group of Yakuza financed super ninjas and had to fight my way out with a toothpick, dismembering a virtual army of the bloodthirsty über-assassins in the process, impressed the grand master to the point of being made an honorary super ninja and ultimately was sworn to secrecy on the existence of the clan on pain of death by imploding heart. You won't hear me say anything like that.

Soooo, let's move on. In the spirit of previous posts I have yet again found something in Japan that tickled my fancy. No, that's fancy, with a C. Get your mind out of the gutter. The sidewalks of all but the tiniest streets in Japan are paved with a special kind of yellow, patterned stones. At first I thought they were used to separate the sidewalk between pedestrians and bicycles but upon further study I realized that their purpose was guiding blind people. The stones are patterned with groves in the direction of the road and with a dotted pattern where the path splits or at a crossing. It all seems very useful, but I have to ask, if their purpose is to guide *blind people* why are they *painted yellow*? Except for giving them a distinct Oz feel it seems like a waste of good paint.