I have a LOT of blogging to catch up on. My trip to Tokyo, London, Montana and a slew of other mini trips for marathons.
I'll start with this post about Japan in the meantime, while I finish up the 'story' part of my trip.
Below are just some random pictures from Japan and how culturally different they are from America.
More to come!
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| The Japanese are very clean and respectful. This station was at the cafeteria in the mall. NO ONE leaves a mess. Everyone dumped their garbage appropriately AND cleaned up their spot with the cleaners and washcloths provided. |
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| Gary and I would frequently go to 7/11...yes, THAT 7/11 and get breakfast every day. They had these amazing warm bean paste buns and hot coffee in a can. You could also get little sushi meals at 7/11 like shown below. They were delicious and cheap. |
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| In Japan, there are vending machines EVERYWHERE along every street. They offer cold AND hot drinks. It is awesome! I love getting hot tea or hot coffee anywhere. And it was cheap too! about 150 yen or 1 USD. And you could use your phone to pay for everything everywhere. You add a Suica card to your apple wallet and just add cash to the card. You can use the card at vending machines, stores, and the train stations. It's super easy and fast. |
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| The squatty potty |
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Toilets in Japan are very high tech. Even the public ones. They have multiple bidet features like front and rear water spray, they can blow air on you, and even some can turn on different sounds to cover up your bathroom sounds! haha. They have automatic lids that lift and lower. Some have lights in the bowl. However, although rare in the city, it was still possible to find a 'squatty potty', which looks like a rectangular sink in the floor that flushes. The juxtaposition of these fancy toilets next to the squatty potties was kind of funny.
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| Most hotels have something called an 'onsen'. it's like a spa. They are separated by gender. Men have their own onsen and women have their own. It is common to be naked in the onsen. In fact, there are a lot of signs that they they do not want clothing in the spa water. They want you to disrobe, rinse off, then enter the spa water naked. The water is supposed to be healing, etc. The other thing with onsens, is that you are NOT allowed to have tattoos. Apparently, if you have tattoos, you need to cover them up. If they are too big to cover, then you are just not allowed to go. Beaches are the same way. You are not allowed to have tattoos exposed. My cousin said that the younger generations are getting better at tattoos, but for the time being, tattoos are associated with gangs in Japan, so that's why tattoos are forbidden. |
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| One of the things I learned, is that a common symbol on Buddhist temples is the swastika. That symbol has been used by Buddhist temples for 1000s of years before the Nazis took it and made it their own (the Nazis rotate their symbol slightly). |
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| Japanese kids (and adults like me) love capsule toys. These machines are everywhere. They are similar to kinder eggs (except no food inside). They have a little toy inside the plastic ball. They ranged from 100 yen to 500 yen each (50 cents to 3 dollars). |
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| A wall of capsule toy machines on the street |
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| One of the Buddhist temples we went to had 'fair food' and what I would call a 'farmer's market'. One of the items was seaweed. You could buy fresh seaweed from this guy. Now, I loved loved loved almost all Japanese food....BUT, I could not get past the smell of the fresh seaweed. Dried seaweed was delicious, but something about that super fresh smell I just could not get past. |
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| Don Quijote is a common department store all over Tokyo. They sell EVERYTHING there. It's giant and loud and busy. Multiple floors of everything. I needed luggage to haul all the stuff I bought in Japan...I got a nice suitcase there for 50 USD. Gary ran out of deodorant...we got it there. It is a great place to get super cheap souvenirs too. |
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| A lot of younger girls would dress like this. it's very much exactly how I imagined young, Japanese girls dressing. |
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| People do NOT walk and smoke or vape. If you are a smoker, you go to a designated area like this to smoke and vape. I'm not sure the reason for the designated area....is it to help keep the city clean? Is it so that non-smokers do not see people smoking? Is it to keep the smoke from bothering non-smokers? (These areas were always outside, not inside). |
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| Instead of packing a ton of extra clothes, we decided to just do laundry when it was available. This is the machine that I had to use in Hiroshima. It washed and dried in the same machine. It took me a few minutes to figure out how the heck to operate this thing! |
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It is very common to have 'pajamas' for each person in the hotel room. And, EVERYONE wears them. You will stick out if you do not wear the pajamas that are provided to you by the hotel. When walking around the hotel, enjoying the Onsen, or sitting in a common area eating and reading, people do not wear their street clothes. People wear these. | | In addition to the 'pajamas', the hotels have slippers for you to use. Some places will have you take off your shoes and put on slippers right at the front door. Some more 'western' hotels will have slippers in your room. However, just like the pajamas, people do not wear their street shoes around the hotel. EVERYONE wears the slippers. |
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The Japanese are the most orderly humans on the planet. No joke when I say that people stand in an orderly line in these taped off 'corrals' to wait for the train. My cousin told of experiencing the packed trains where they have white-gloved attendants pushing people onto the trains so that they can shut the doors. There was only one time during our trip that I remember seeing the attendants 'waiting' for the rush hour traffic, but I never saw them push people. Honestly, not every train station is like that. There are a couple of stations in downtown Tokyo that I could see being THAT busy, but not every one.
Lastly, the strangest thing is that Japan is so safe that you will see young children walking around, taking the train, etc. all by themselves. The youngest we saw were maybe around 10 years old? But it's hard to tell because the entire population is very petite. My cousin did say that when they first got to Japan, her kids were all pre-teens. She was scared to death to let them ride the train into Tokyo by themselves. She said, "everyone will tell you that it's fine and not to worry." So, her kids were around 10-13 and they would ride with their friends on the train for an hour into Tokyo and it was no big deal. She said the hardest part about this experience is that she will have to TAKE AWAY privileges when they come back to the States.
Another interesting observation is that I forget what a melting pot the US is compared to other countries. Even in vanilla West Michigan, I at least see several different ethnicities every single day. In Japan, everyone is Japanese. Everyone is the same size, shape, color, dresses alike etc. During the marathon was the only time Japan felt like a melting pot of different people. Otherwise, everywhere we went we stuck out as Americans. And once in a while we would spot another American couple and they stuck out of the crowd too. haha. Absolutely no one was racist against us or anything like that...The Japanese are the most polite, kind people on the planet. It's just strange to go 2 weeks without seeing anyone different.
Another observation I forgot about, is that Japan is CHEAP. We stayed in 5 star hotels for less than $100 bucks a night. We watched a lot of youtube videos to learn about Japan, and most people were even saying that after the pandemic PRICES WERE SUPER HIGH in Japan. They said before the pandemic, you could stay in a super nice hotel for $25. Literally, the only expense were the plane tickets getting there. The bullet train tickets from Tokyo to and from Hiroshima were around $200 a piece I think. Otherwise, food, restaurants, gifts, clothing, hotels, EVERYTHING was super cheap. This was confusing because I thought that Japan would be expensive. But, $1.00 USD = 153 JPY (Japanese Yen). |
Added info on 12/30/24: Another thing I forgot, as a traveler, Japan is cheap. However, when talking to my cousin, she said housing and having a car is crazy expensive. She said having a car with the insurance and fees is several several thousand a year. She said they do that because they want you to take public transportation instead of having a car. Also, we noticed that most cars are electric. The city traffic is VERY quiet. In New York, there is honking and sirens all day and all night. In Tokyo, the city is quiet as a mouse. No honking. No sirens. No car sounds.
As far as housing goes, she did mention that they were looking to live off base, but renting was insanely expensive. The monthly payment isn't bad, but she said when you rent a place, the custom is to buy a gift for your landlord that equals one months rent. And then you also need to get gifts for all your neighbors as custom too. The 'start up' costs for renting were just too much, so they decided to live on base. They also said that foreigners are not allowed to purchase property. Ever. I think even if you become a national, you are not allowed to own property.
