Run Into Him

"We can now say for certain which brand of tea the Dalai Lama reaches for when he visits a Japanese convenience store.

The Dalai Lama arrived in Japan to begin a nearly two-week stay in the country. His schedule includes visits to disaster victims, lectures in Tokyo, and meetings with prominent cultural and educational figures. Oh, and apparently a stop by a 7-Eleven in Wakayama Prefecture.

While Japan’s large number of temples means that the sight of a robed monk walking about in secular society isn’t really cause for any great surprise, it’s a little different when you’re working the register in rural Japan and the leader of Tibetan Buddhism wanders in and starts eyeballing your store’s display case of corndogs and croquettes.

We can also see that His Holiness has a liking for the Coca-Cola Company’s bottled royal milk tea from its Kocha Kaden series. As a matter of fact, he’s apparently so fond of it that he started drinking it before paying for it, so it’s a good thing someone snapped that photo in case he skipped out on the bill and they had to track him down for payment later.

The religious leader’s most recent convenience store sighting came as he and his entourage were en route to the Buddhist monastery at Mount Koya to speak with its resident monks.

Is his increased amount of time on Japanese part of an effort to foster a warmer relation with the country, or to see what kind of limited-time munchies its snack food makers have come up with? Having not spoken to the man, we can’t say for sure, but we’ll be sure to ask if we run into him at our local 7-Eleven or Family Mart."

~ Naver Matome