The Sweet Potato Truck

Several weeks back, while Chad was still home for Christmas vacation, we heard a song on a loudspeaker coming from outside the house.  I wasn't too alarmed by this because I hear stuff from loudspeakers outside pretty regularly.  There is an elementary school nearby and sometimes I can hear them calling the children in from recess during the day over a loudspeaker (or I assume that's what they're doing).  There's also a truck that comes by about once a month to collect junk (small appliances, old bikes, TVs etc.) and it has a loudspeaker that continuously lists the stuff they will take as it drives around the neighborhood.

But this was something new and Chad went to check it out but couldn't figure out what it was.  Later, he asked our teacher and she finally figured out that it was the sweet potato truck.  Apparently this is similar to an ice cream truck but instead of ice cream in the summertime, it sells hot sweet potatos in the wintertime.  Our teacher described the feeling a Japanese person gets when they hear the sweet potato truck coming down the street and it was very similar to what hearing the ice cream truck does to an American.

Had I paid more attention to the song I probably could've figured it out because there is also a sweet potato cart in the supermarket that has hot sweet potatos for sale.  The supermarket cart continuously sings "Yakiimo, yakiimo, yakiimo desu!"  which is not the same song that the truck sings but I could've recognized "yakiimo" as meaning sweet potato.  I did get a couple of sweet potatos off the cart a long time ago and they were OK....more yellow than orange and not as strong tasting as American ones.

I don't have a picture of the truck, but here's the supermarket cart