These fruit-shaped bus shelters make public transit more delicious

Waiting for a bus is never the most fun part of a commute, but if you lived in Isahaya City, Japan, you could at least pretend you were some kind of magic bus-riding mouse in a fairy tale. Bus shelters in the city are sculpted and painted to look like giant fruit.

The fruit shelters were installed in 1990 for a travel expo, but are so popular that they’ve stuck around. They’d be a little out of place in, say, New York — “Big Apple” or not, I don’t really see a large American city being willing to cosplay as a fruit salad. But they’re a nice reminder that bus stops don’t have to look grim, and that they can even add some whimsy to your commute.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has rounded up some other ideas, some of which are a little less precious.