[Pre-Order] &TEAM 2027 SEASON'S GREETINGS 'Who Ate the Cake?'🍰 📍 🗓️ Pre-Order 2026.10.2 5PM (JST) 🗓️ Release 2026.12.16 (JST) #andTEAM# #エンティーム# #Seasons_Greetings# #who_ate_the_cake#

My wife's younger sister, Kana, keeps 38 strips of masking tape on the inside of her kitchen cabinet door. Each one has a name on it. Written in marker. Some are smudged. One has a little cartoon heart. She has moved them across the Pacific Ocean. She will never throw them away. Three years ago, Kana and her husband moved to a quiet street outside Fort Worth, Texas, for his job. She knew no one. Her English was careful and small. For four months, the neighbors waved. She waved back. That was all. Then her son Haru was born nine weeks early. Two pounds, eleven ounces. Six weeks in the NICU. Her husband had to keep working. Every day, Kana drove 40 minutes each way to sit beside a plastic box and watch her son breathe. Every night, she came home to an empty kitchen and ate crackers standing up. In Japan, when someone is struggling, we send a polite card. We say, "Please tell me if there is anything I can do." And then we wait, very respectfully, to be asked. On the third day, there was a knock. It was Carol, from across the street. Sixty-something. Reading glasses on her head. A casserole dish in one hand, a clipboard in the other. She didn't ask what Kana needed. She said, "Okay, hon. Dinner's covered for six weeks. You just go love that baby." Every dish that came had a strip of masking tape on the lid, with a name on it. So she'd know who to give it back to. She kept every single one. CAROL Chicken spaghetti. "350 for 30 min. You don't have to return the dish." (I returned the dish. It came back full. I returned it again. It came back full again. This continued for two years. I never won.) MIKE A rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, still warm in the plastic bag. And a box of diapers in the wrong size. The tape said: "I can't cook. Sorry." (Mike, you did so well.) THE HENDERSONS (ALL 5 OF US) Lasagna. And a note in crayon from their youngest: "WE PRAYD FOR YOUR BABY. WHAT IS HIS NAME." (I wrote back, "Haru." The next week, their dish came with a card. "HI HARU. GET BIG.") DEBBIE Frito pie. (I did not know you could pour chili into a bag of chips. Now I know. I can never unknow it. I make it in Japan now. My husband's coworkers are afraid.) DARRELL This tape was not on a dish. It was stuck to the front door. "Mowed your yard. Don't worry about it." (I never once saw Darrell mow. For six weeks, my grass was perfect.) BARB This one came from the clipboard Carol left on the porch. A sign-up sheet. Not for food. "TUES 2–4. I'll hold the baby so Mama can sleep. — Barb" (When Haru came home, Barb came every Tuesday. I slept two hours. I woke up and Barb was singing to him. A song about a yellow rose. I cried in the hallway so she wouldn't see.) And then there is the one with the shaky handwriting. DOROTHY (89) A pound cake. Dorothy didn't drive anymore. Her grandson brought her. She came up the walk with a walker and the cake balanced on the seat. It took her a long time. She would not let anyone carry it. At the door, she said: "I've baked a cake for every new baby on this street since 1961. I wasn't about to skip yours." Kana couldn't speak. At the end of the six weeks, she found Carol in her front yard. She tried to say it properly, the way we're taught. "I don't know how I can ever repay you. I'm a stranger. I'm not even American." Carol took off her reading glasses. "Honey. You live on Pecan Street. That makes you ours." Kana moved back to Japan last year. The tape went with her. Thirty-eight names, in a little row, on the inside of a cabinet door in a kitchen in Tokyo. Haru is three now. Every morning, when his mom reaches for the cups, he points at the tape and says the names out loud. Carol. Mike. Darrell. Barb. Dorothy. He has never met a single one of them. He thinks they're his family. He's not wrong. America, I think you're tired. I think you've been told for a long time that you've stopped being good neighbors. Then explain the masking tape. When somebody's baby comes too early, you don't ask what you can do. You preheat the oven. You write your name on a piece of tape so they'll know who to give the dish back to. And then you tell them not to give it back. People say "Love thy neighbor" like it's something written in a book. It is. It's also written on masking tape. In marker. On a hundred thousand casserole lids. Tonight. Right now. On some street in your country, someone's oven is on for a stranger. You never stopped. A little boy in Tokyo knows your names.

In Japan, there is an ancient rule of politeness. When someone offers you something, you refuse. Three times. "Would you like some tea?" "Oh, no, I couldn't." "Please." "No, really, don't trouble yourself." "I insist." "I'm fine, thank you." "Please, have some tea." "...Well, if you insist." Four offers. Three refusals. Then tea. Everyone knows the rules. It's beautiful. It's been working for centuries. My coworker Uchida is the most polite man in Japan. On his first trip to America, he stayed with a family in Ohio. On the first night, the host mom asked if he was hungry. He said, "Oh, no, I'm fine." Refusal number one. She said, "Okay!" And that was it. There was no second offer. There was no dinner. (In Ohio, if you say no, they believe you. Nobody had told him.) At 11 p.m., starving, Uchida crept into the kitchen and bit into an apple from the bowl on the table. It was wax. Two years later, his company sent him to Georgia. He told me he had learned his lesson. This time, he would be careful. He was not ready for Miss Loretta. Miss Loretta is 81. She has lived in the same house in Georgia since 1967. She has fed every human being who has ever walked through her door. She has been undefeated since the Johnson administration. He walked in. She didn't even say hello first. LORETTA: "You want some sweet tea, baby?" UCHIDA: "Oh, no, thank you." (Refusal one. Polite.) LORETTA: "I'll just get you a little." UCHIDA: "No, no, please, don't trouble yourself." (Refusal two.) LORETTA: (already pouring) "It's no trouble at all." UCHIDA: "Really, I'm fine." (Refusal three. Now she offers once more, and I accept. The ancient system.) LORETTA: (sets down the glass) "There you go." (She did not offer a fourth time. She skipped straight to delivery.) UCHIDA: "...Thank you." LORETTA: "You hungry?" UCHIDA: "Oh, no, I ate on the plane." (Refusal one.) LORETTA: "I'll fix you a plate." UCHIDA: "Please, it's really not necessary." (Refusal two.) Fried chicken arrived. UCHIDA: "I couldn't possibly." (Refusal three.) Macaroni and cheese arrived. UCHIDA: "Miss Loretta, I really am full." (Refusal four. Outside the system now. Uncharted territory.) Biscuits arrived. He told me that was the moment he understood. In Japan, every "no" brings you one step closer to "yes." In Georgia, every "no" brings you a biscuit. So he panicked. He changed strategy. He thought: if "no" makes more food appear, then "yes" must make it stop. UCHIDA: "Yes! Yes, this is perfect, thank you, I have enough." LORETTA: "Oh, good, you like it! I'll get you some more." There is no word that makes it stop. Peach cobbler arrived. With ice cream. Uchida had not been asked about the cobbler. Nobody is asked about the cobbler. The cobbler simply happens. Uchida says he sat there, sweating, eating, bowing between bites, while an 81-year-old woman stood over him like a referee, saying "Eat, baby, eat," and patting his shoulder every time he swallowed. When he finally stood up to leave, he bowed very deeply. UCHIDA: "Thank you for the wonderful meal. I am completely full." LORETTA: "Well, take some home." UCHIDA: "No, really, I—" He flew back to Tokyo with a pound cake in his carry-on. At airport security, the officer pulled his bag, unzipped it, and stared at an entire foil-wrapped pound cake. OFFICER: "Sir, why do you have a whole cake?" UCHIDA: "I tried to say no." OFFICER: (long pause) "...Was it a grandma?" UCHIDA: "Yes." The officer zipped the bag closed, handed it back, and waved him through. No more questions. Before he left Georgia, Uchida asked Miss Loretta why she never accepted his refusals. Not once. Not even the polite ones. She laughed and patted his cheek. "Honey, in this house, 'no' just means you're being polite. And you don't have to be polite here. You're home." Uchida has been back in Tokyo for a year. He has changed. When a coworker visits his desk now, he offers them coffee. They say no, the polite Japanese way. He doesn't ask again. He just brings the coffee. The whole office is very confused. He says it's the most Southern thing he knows how to do.

In Japan, the highest compliment a man can give is "not bad." My coworker Saito's father has said it exactly three times. At Saito's wedding. When Saito's son was born. And once, about a very good eel. Last year, our company sent Saito to our office in Charlotte, North Carolina, for six months. On his first morning, a woman in accounting named Brenda picked up a stapler and said, "Oh my gosh. This is the best stapler ever." Saito is an engineer. He needed to know which stapler. So he started a spreadsheet. Four columns: Date. Thing. Who said it. Actual quality, 1 to 5. He showed it to me when he came home. Some rows: Day 3. The weather. "Isn't this the best day?" It was 58 and cloudy. Actual quality: 2. Day 9. Saito's tie. "Best tie in the building." Saito owns five identical navy ties. He was wearing the same one as Day 4. Day 22. Gas station sweet tea. "Best sweet tea in the state." He heard this at four more gas stations. North Carolina has at least five bests. Actual quality: 5, 5, 5, 5, 5. He has no explanation. Day 41. A four-year-old's drawing of a horse. Her grandfather held it up in the church parking lot. "That is the best horse I have ever seen." It was a potato with legs. Actual quality: he could not bring himself to type a number. Day 63. Saito's English. "Dude. Your English is the best." For twenty years in Japan, Saito's English has been described as "a good effort." He went to the restroom for a while. Day 97. A Little League team lost 14 to 2. The coach gathered them up. "Best game you boys ever played." Saito checked the stats. It was not. Every boy walked off that field taller anyway. Somewhere around Day 120, Saito stopped filling in the last column. I asked him why. "At first, I thought they were exaggerating," he said. "They are not exaggerating. They are deciding." "In Japan, we save 'the best' for once in a lifetime. Americans spend it every day. And somehow, they never run out." On his last day, the office had a cake. Brenda stood up and said, "Y'all, this is the best guy we ever had." Saito typed it in. Row 1,214. He left the last column empty. Last Tuesday, at lunch in Tokyo, our section chief asked Saito how his convenience-store sandwich was. "Best sandwich ever," Saito said. The section chief looked at the sandwich. Then at Saito. Then he went downstairs and bought two. And on Sunday, Saito's father ate his mother's curry, put down his spoon, and said: "Not bad." Then, after a long pause: "...Maybe the best." His mother made him say it again. Twice.

BEWARE! Don't buy any crypto/memecoin associated with me. EVER. Regarding the fake account @unclebobsagent, Someone cashed out with a $32K profit/theft. The deployer wallet 0x1140…a865 launched the token with about $125 of ETH, rode the frenzy, claimed launchpad fees, then bridged out ~13.15 ETH (~$32–33k) via a SpokePool transfer about 12 hours ago. That wallet now holds zero BOB and about four cents of ETH. So this wasn’t a hack of my account. It was the usual memecoin play: used my name/@unclebobsagent, attracted buyers (~$600k of trading volume while price fell ~90%), sold into them, moved the ETH off-chain. Early flippers may have made money too; later buyers are the ones who ate the dump. I don’t have a full audited P&L of every wallet — just that clear ~$32k+ outbound from the launcher after the pump.

People who ate breakfast once a week or less had nearly three times the odds of developing depression symptoms over three years, compared with people who ate it every day. A study of 716 workers in Japan found the risk climbed as breakfast got rarer. At a Japanese electrical manufacturer, 716 employees aged 19 to 68 answered detailed questions about what and how often they ate. None of them had depression symptoms or a mental health diagnosis at the start. Three years later, researchers from Japan's National Center for Global Health and Medicine checked who had developed symptoms using a standard depression questionnaire. The study appeared in Psychiatry Research in 2019. Breakfast frequency was sorted into five groups: daily, 5 to 6 times a week, 3 to 4 times, 1 to 2 times, and once a week or less. People in the rarest group had 2.9 times the odds of developing depression symptoms, even after accounting for the rest of their diet and their lifestyle. The odds tended to rise with each step down in breakfast frequency. Low mood can make people skip meals, which raises a chicken-and-egg question. Starting with people who had no depression symptoms helps with that, although it can't settle it completely, and every participant worked for the same company in one country. Among these 716 employees, the ones who almost never ate breakfast were the likeliest to develop depression symptoms three years later.

Eating 85 percent dark chocolate every day for three weeks lowered negative moods in a randomized trial, and the people who ate it ended up with more varied gut bacteria. The 70 percent chocolate had no clear effect on mood. Seoul National University researchers split 48 healthy adults aged 20 to 30 into three groups. One group ate 30 grams a day of 85 percent dark chocolate, about a third of a standard 100-gram bar. Another ate 30 grams of 70 percent chocolate, and the third ate none. The study appeared in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. Mood was tracked with a standard questionnaire that measures good and bad feelings, such as feeling upset, nervous, or irritable. After three weeks, bad feelings dropped in the 85 percent group, and the 70 percent group showed no clear change. Stool samples from the 85 percent group showed a wider variety of gut bacteria than the no-chocolate group. One type, Blautia obeum, went up, and another, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, went down. People whose gut bacteria became more varied, and whose Blautia obeum rose the most, had the biggest drops in bad mood. Dark chocolate may work like food for certain gut bacteria, the researchers suggest, and those bacteria could affect mood through the connection between the gut and the brain. Each group had only 14 to 18 people, and the link between bacteria and mood is a correlation. In this trial, the darker chocolate lowered bad moods within three weeks, and the milder one left mood about where it started.