Yakult Ladies Are an Icon in Japan | Eater

"Growing up in Nagoya, my mother would sometimes bring us to Tsuruma Park after school to let us run free; the playground, fringed by dark trees that cast shade on the Showa-era slides, always felt a little hidden, a separate place where only mothers and children could go. Breaking through that quiet barrier, the Yakult lady would sail up on her bicycle with a cool-blue cooler box on the back, and a discernible excitement would descend over the crowd of kids as we rushed like hungry pigeons to buy the sweet yogurt drinks she pulled from the cooler; her neat twist of the waist and flip of the latch, my mother pressing a few coins into her palm, and the bicycle, bonnet, and the drink’s sweet tang all felt like signals that the world around me was safe and sensible, even as I briefly wondered whether she or my mother was taking care of us." - Nina Li Coomes