In Japan, there are sales trucks all over the place. Most are just plain noisy and annoying–the secondhand shop truck, the kerosene truck, lunch and snack trucks, and so on. Annoying because they drive at 5 kph and wander through all the driveways and small roads in the neighborhood, all the time blaring annoying announcements and mind-numbing repeating electronic tunes at full blast. Their slow and winding path keeps them well within earshot for perhaps half an hour each, and it’s impossible to shut out unless your listening to headphones with the volume way up.

One truck selling stuff that regularly wanders by is a bit less annoying: the sweet potato truck. A traditional standard in Japan, a small truck (in older times, a cart) with a small oven furnace and sweet potatoes (“yaki-imo,” or baked potatoes” in Japanese) hot and ready to eat. Hard to miss when it comes, there is always a musical call, a voice singing, “yakiiiiiiii… imooooooo!”

This is a bit less annoying than the others because it is (a) an organic sound, and (b) not shouted at blaring volumes–they seem to be aware of the annoyance factor and keep it down to a reasonable blast.

Not only that, they even emit a nice smell–a product of the wood-burning stove in the back of the truck, a kind of fireplace/campfire smell.

I’m not a big fan of sweet potatoes, though, so I can’t review the taste. But I’d have to say that if these were the only trucks going around selling stuff in the neighborhood, I wouldn’t mind quite so much. Well, at least the weather is warmer and that blasted kerosene truck no longer comes by Wednesday and Saturday evenings.