JAPAN: A Summary

Let me think back.  As a kid, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was already interested in Japan.  I was a huge (and still am) fan of all things Ninja. (sorry Pirate fans, Ninjas FTW) I loved Voltron and Tranzor Z and Spectreman.  It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I realized these awesome shows were all made by the Japanese.  And it wasn’t until later in life did I realize that lots of the weird toys I played with as a kid were Japanese too.  So basically, I’ve been a “Japanophile” all my life.  And I think the same goes for Linda.  For as long as I can remember, we’ve both wanted to take a trip to Japan.  We both love the food, the Otaku culture, and everything in between.  For a long time, a Japan trip just wasn’t in the cards.  We were either too busy or too broke or both.  Several times we started the planning process, but things just didn’t pan out.  We would just get our fix at the nearest Japan Town.  However this year, we got serious.  We started planning back in January, and with the tickets bought and the hotels booked, we were going to Japan for Halloween 2010!

Our arrival to Japan was somewhat muted, as we had to fly from Reno to LAX first, and then catch an eleven and a half hour flight to Japan from there.  We arrived at 4:00pm Japan time, and it’s hard to believe, be we didn’t even get to go outside until we arrived in Kyoto, where it was already dark.  Kyoto is a four hour journey from Narita International Airport.  Basically, you get off the plane at Narita, clear immigration, and walk through the airport and find the JTB counter to get your Japan Rail passes.  Then you go to a JR desk and secure seats on the Narita Express to Tokyo, and at the same time you can get Shinkensen (bullet train) seats as well.  Next, you walk through the building to the track and catch a train to Tokyo, which is about a 40 minute ride.  After the train ride to Tokyo’s Shinagawa station, you exit the train, still inside an enormous building, and walk to the Shinkensen track bound for Kyoto.  Then you board the train, and take a comfortable three hour ride at roughly 150 mph.  We chose to start our adventure in Kyoto, because travelling there and then back to Narita at the end of our trip would have just been too much.  Plus, we had events to attend in Tokyo during Halloween weekend.  So Kyoto had to be first.

After arriving in Kyoto, we navigated our way out of Kyoto Station and finally took a breath of real fresh Japanese air.  By the time we arrived in Kyoto, it was 10:30pm Japan time, and with no sleep for well over 24 hours, we needed to get to our hotel and crash.  We were completely exhausted.

The next morning, we met up with Tom and Kris, our good friends from Chicago, who had arrived a day earlier.  We got some coffee and hit the streets, walking toward the Gion area. Finally in the daylight, I was able to see Japan, and I was immediately impressed and overwhelmed with awe.  And it was at this point, I realized that I was at the beginning of one of the greatest trips of my life.

We spent a couple days in Kyoto, and a couple days in Osaka before we got back on another Shinkensen to Tokyo.  At our hotel in Shinjuku the four of us would meet up with old mate, Jim, who flew up from Singapore where he has been working for nearly a year.  It was in Tokyo where I began to take notes on things that I wanted to reflect upon later in writing.  And that is the purpose of what you are reading now. For the remainder of the trip, I wrote stuff down so that I wouldn’t forget about all the little things that impressed me, or made me stop and think, or just perplexed me in general. Since being back, I’ve been asked a few times, “what was your favorite part of Japan”.  To that question I really have no answer, because it wasn’t one place, or one experience, or one thing that was my favorite.  What I liked most about Japan were all the little things that made me realize that here in the US, we are grossly behind.  We are behind socially, environmentally, technologically, economically and personally.  Of course, I was only there for two weeks, and I’m sure, like any large country, Japan has its problems too.  But on the surface, I couldn’t help but notice the differences that made Japan seem better, in many ways, than the USA.  And while I’m not going to get into a long dissertation of why I think America is massively screwed up right now, I am going to discuss why I think certain things work in Japan, while they simply don’t or couldn’t here at home.

Being an American, born and raised in this great country, you will notice things right away when you get to Japan.  You will notice how every booth, at every train station and post office has someone there, working, and ready to help you.  It wasn’t like going to the post office here, that’s for sure.  Upon entering, there is a man waiting to help you find the paperwork for whatever it is you need.  Then you get a number, and take a seat on a nice sofa and watch a little TV while you fill out your forms.  A few minutes later, your number is called, and you go up to the counter.  There, the agent will take care of your needs and you are on your way.  It was a very pleasant, comfortable experience. 

And it is with this exceptional level of service, respect, and accommodation that the Japanese culture as I saw it, surpasses us on so many levels.  From what I understand and saw first hand, there is pretty much no petty crime, even in Tokyo.  No vandalism.  No petty theft.  No littering.  And while we did see some homeless, there wasn’t even any pan handling.  All those unpleasantries that come with visiting or living in a big city were just not there in Japan, or at least the level of these problems was suppressed to the point of obscurity.  No scratched up windows on the subways.  No garbage left on your seat.   No paranoia while you walk down a dark alley at night.  I barely even worried about leaving my bag full of camera gear unattended for a few minutes.  And I was in Tokyo, one of the biggest cities in the world.  It was simply amazing to spend time there.  Even with the massive crowds at rush hour, the pedestrian traffic and bicycle traffic seemed to just blend together and move along like a school of fish.  No bumping or pushing or shoving or rude outbursts from anyone.  It’s like everyone just moved together with an invisible force field around them, even us, as we weaved in and out of the frenzy to get to our train.  And then once you get on the train, you will be shocked, because you might be the loudest one riding.  Everyone sets their phone to vibrate. Everyone.  And if you saw someone talking on the phone, they cupped their mouths with their free hand to muffle their voice.  At one point we were on a train and a woman had a baby that started crying.  Rather than mindlessly subject all her fellow passengers to one of the most irritating sounds in the world, she politely got up and went into the vestibule where the sound of her unhappy infant could only faintly be heard.  This extreme politeness among the Japanese appeared to be as normal as the average America’s extreme brashness.  It is engrained in them.

Why is this?  Is it simply because of Japan’s homogenous population?  Or could this be a result of the fact that there are 13 million people living in Tokyo alone.  I would imagine it’s a bit of both, but mostly I think it is a cultural thing that goes back to the beginning.  But I also think that in Japan’s big cities, things must work.  For if even one of those trains were to break down, the result might just be complete chaos. Not hostile chaos, but a traffic jam of epic proportions.  There are just so many people in Tokyo that any sort of system failure would most likely result in a humongous problem.  And you can almost feel it.  Tokyo is a finely tuned machine.  They cannot afford to let one cog get out of whack.  But in general, I think socially, the behavior of the Japanese people is born out of their identity, history and culture as a nation, not just out of the sheer mass of their population.  Here in the States there are simply too many races and cultures clashing, too many religions to pacify, and too much political corruption and division.  With many of those factors removed or at least lessened in Japan, you are just left with a nation of like minded people, doing unto others what they would want done to themselves.  At least it seemed that way for our two weeks there.

While you are in Japan, you will notice how clean things are everywhere.  You could pretty much eat off the ground in Kyoto and even the massive metropolis of Tokyo was clean.  Kyoto is so clean, you just have to see it to believe it.  The Japanese are obsessed it seems, with cleanliness in general.  We saw a lot of people with masks on. You know, the type of white hospital mask that CNN shows people wearing when they run stories about the bird flu.  Well, in reality, you will see a lot of people wearing these little white masks.  At first I thought it was because they were just paranoid germaphobes.  But then I realized that these people were already sick, and they were covering their noses and mouths so that others around them would not have to breathe their germs.  Think about that.

Girl wearing mask in a crowded shopping bizarre, a common sight.

Over here, someone on a bus or train has no problem sneezing and coughing all over the place, potentially infecting everyone else.  Needless to say, hand shaking is not the norm.  And we all know about the shoes off tradition.  This isn’t everywhere in Japan, but we did visit a few establishments that did have this rule.  Typically, they give you slippers to wear indoors.  And there are always different slippers for the bathroom.  I like the shoes off rule.  I’m sure it helps keep the indoor spaces cleaner, and with your shoes off, it promotes comfort and relaxation.  But there was one thing I found a little strange and contrary to the whole cleanliness, health and courtesy thing.  That is, smoking.  In most of the restaurants we went to, smoking everywhere was still totally acceptable.  Have you ever seen a sushi bar full of men, eating fish, drinking sake and smoking like chimneys all at the same time? Yeah, well, that is pretty much normal in Japan, and strange, considering everything else.

Going to the bathroom was even a different and often better experience in Japan.  Almost all of the public bathrooms I used were clean.  The only bathroom that was a little nasty was one I had to use in a public park in Kichijoji.  But it was a squat toilet.  And when you take a dump in a squat toilet, you don’t touch anything. So in reality, it was cleaner than any western public toilet.  And those awesome Toto toilet seats were just about everywhere as well.  Seat warmers and ass squirters were pretty much standard in most places.

Our bathroom in the Kyoto Hotel.

Not only are the Japanese clean, courteous and accommodating, they are also seem to be extremely efficient, at least in the cities.  If you pay attention, you will notice how not a single light bulb is burnt out anywhere.  If you don’t take it for granted, you might also notice how every ticket machine, every turnstile, and every vending machine of one type or another is working; not empty, not out of order, but steadfastly operating at full capacity.  And if you’ve never lived in or spent any bit of time in a big city here in the United States, none of this will mean anything to you.  But I have.  I lived in Chicago for many years, and I have been to NY, San Francisco, LA and a few other sizeable cities in the US.  And all of them are the same.  They are all dirty, smelly, out of date, often dangerous, inconvenient hassles to be in or live in.  Granted, there are many great things about some of our big cities, but it’s the little things that slowly wear you down when you live there.  In a nut shell, I left Chicago not because I hated the city as a whole, but because I hated all of the little daily annoyances that slowly wear you out, and make you hate being there.  There is a word for it, I think it’s called “thriving”.  Some people manage to thrive in our big cities.  I however, simply could not.  But in Tokyo, I could see how many people could thrive there.  And it is because the Japanese are doing something about those little annoying things that keep you from loving it.  It seems like if something isn’t working right, or taking a little too long, or is a little inconvenient, they will fix it and make it better.  They will keep fixing it, until it becomes easy.  I think they are trying to take the hassle and angst out of daily life in the city.  And one of the ways I think they accomplish this, is with exceptional quality, in every aspect of their daily lives.  Everything from getting a donut to a seat on the bullet trains is met with a level of service and quality that one only finds in the finest, most expensive places in the United States.  Japan was like first class all the way.  How do they do this?  How do they make EVERYTHING seem so special?  Well, for starters, there is no tipping in Japan.  You don’t tip severs, and you don’t tip cab drivers.  From what I understand, the thought process behind this is that no one should receive better service than someone else, based on money.  Basically, if you are all regular customers at a ramen shop, why should Joe Blow get better service because he tips a little better than John Doe?  And while I understand it is kind of a chicken versus the egg concept, I think the Japanese are on to something with this “no tipping” rule.  And it’s just so much nicer and faster to get your bill and see what you owe and not have to calculate anything or worry about whether you’re tipping enough or not.  You just pay and go.  Virtually everywhere we went, we were treated the same, with the same quality as the next guy, Japanese or not.  Save for a couple restaurants where we felt a little out of place or rejected because we were foreigners, we were treated exceptionally well everywhere. 

The train system in Tokyo is also amazingly efficient.  It is a massive, multi-legged system that can basically get you anywhere, and fast.  It only takes a minute to figure it out, as it is quite simple, and most of the stations had large train maps with English subtexts under the Japanese characters.  And even when there was no English, I was easily able to match up the Japanese characters with my handheld English train map.  And then there is the timeliness and frequency of the trains.  There are signs above each platform that tell you the next train coming, and when it is due to arrive, and from what I saw, it was as punctual as you can get.



We did witness one very short delay at one point, but it didn’t seem to disrupt anything.  This extreme efficiency is everywhere.  The airports were the same.  Everything was very quick and easy, and every counter seemed to be staffed up.  We never waited in any lines at the airport.  But we certainly did at LAX after we flew home.  Upon our return, we were also quickly greeted with a broken moving sidewalk, and then a lengthy walk from the International terminal to customs and immigration, where there was a broken display that was supposed to be briefing us on what do and where to go, and a rather long line.  Then we had another long walk, a shuttle ride, and another bag checking exercise before we had yet another long walk to a terminal where we could catch our flight home to Reno.  The realization of just how inefficient, outdated, and inconvenient the LAX experience was, became acutely annoying because we had just returned from Japan.  But what bothers me the most is that for some reason, we just accept it.  Why? 

From a green perspective, it seems like the Japanese are really trying to make a difference in their cities.  Every vending machine, and there are many (one machine for every 23 people according to Wikipedia), has a recycle bin for cans and plastic bottles next to it.  So basically, they are selling you a drink, and at the same time they are inviting you to easily dispose of the empty can or bottle in a responsible way. 

Vending machine and recycle bin. Do you think people in America would follow the rules and only throw cans and bottles in one of these recycle bins?  I doubt it.

Many of these recycle bins also had slots for actual garbage, or other combustibles. But as a rule of thumb, garbage was packed in and packed out.  Disgusting, wasp infested, overflowing, smelly public garbage cans are something you do not see in Japan.  If you have trash, you carry it until you find an appropriate place to dispose of it.  This would not work in the US.  Over here, if you can’t find a place to stuff your McDonalds trash as soon as you are done with it, many Americans feel no shame in just leaving it for someone else to deal with. And all too often it is Mother Nature who is left to deal with this simple task.  I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten on the train in Chicago to find some dirtbag’s discarded chicken bones from KFC left on the floor or seat.  In Japan, you would rarely even find some leftover newspapers.  In Tokyo however, there was evidence of some trash around, especially at the end of the night, but it was so miniscule compared to the litter you see in most of our cities, it was almost as if there was none at all.  It was also interesting to see all the small cars they are using over there.  It looked like a lot of them were hybrids of one sort or another as well.  There were some regular, full sized automobiles, but for the most part, the roads were dominated by mini (and I mean mini) vans and compact cars.  That is of course, if you don’t count all the cabs, which I think are mostly diesel Toyotas or Nissans.  And if they weren’t driving cars, they were riding motorcycles, scooters, bicycles or on foot.  I would be curious to find out if the vehicles driven outside the city are more normal sized vehicles, when compared to what we have here.  Another Japanese tradition I liked which might not have originally been prompted by environmental concerns, but it none-the-less works out that way, is the use of a moist towel instead of a napkin.  Typically, we only find cloth napkins in more expensive restaurants here.  Over there however, a nice wet towel was typically the napkin of choice.  And a moist towel really works much better for wiping your hands than a dry one.  The fast food places we ate at usually have a single moist paper towel wrapped in plastic for the same purpose, which works fairly well for the duration of your dining experience, alleviating the need for 4 or 5 or more paper napkins.

Throughout my stay in Japan, I was constantly awestruck by so much of their inventiveness and cleverness that I just have to list some of the things out here.  While there were many things in Japan happening and working well over there that simply could not work here, like the Cat Cafes for instance, there were a great many things that they have over there that we don’t and should.  And it’s really quite puzzling.  For instance, our hotel in Tokyo had a heated mirror.  You could take a steaming hot shower, and immediately get out and see a clear picture of your opposite self in the mirror above the sink.  The rest of the mirror was completely fogged up, but that section above the sink that you immediately need, was nice and clear and dry. I touched it, and sure enough, it was heated.  They have many clever little inventions in the hotels.  Like these little night lights that are next to each bedside, so you can get up and use the bathroom without disturbing your bed mate.  You simply pull them off the cradle, and they light up when the batteries begin to touch.  When you’re done, push the light back into the cradle, and a little plastic clip separates the batteries and the light goes out.  You don’t even have to fumble for a button.  Simple. 

Night light.






The door stop was nothing but a ball attached to a string.  I’ve never seen that before.

Cool door stop.



In all the train stations they have public lockers.  For 600¥ you can rent a huge locker for the day.  You simply load up the locker, dig into your pocket full of change, insert 600¥, and then the key turns and comes out, locking it shut.  We used one of these lockers in Osaka, after we checked out of our hotel and needed a place to store our luggage while we spent the day shopping.  We were able to fit all of our bags in one locker.  It was very convenient and very helpful. 

Our locker in Osaka full of huge bags.


I can only imagine the various legal, safety and criminal concerns having public lockers everywhere would cause in the United States.  Hell, we’d probably have people storing their children or pets in them while they go to work over here.  But in Japan, it is just another little addition to their advanced and convenient ways.

And speaking of pets, we visited one of Japan’s many “Cat Cafés”.  The cat café is an amazing invention.  Basically, it is a floor or two of a building that you can visit for an hour or so, get a cup of tea or coffee, and pet and play with 20 or so kitties.  It’s like a cat petting zoo for stressed out adults. You pay $10 and you get a drink and a little booklet with pictures of all the cats that live there.  But most of all, you get to spend time unwinding, de-stressing, relaxing, and having fun with a bunch of furry friends.  It’s funny too, because we went after a long day of shopping and walking and sight seeing.  We were all pretty exhausted, and the cat café lifted everyone’s spirits, as far as I could see.  You just can’t help but feel happy and amused in there.  What a great place. 

The cat café.


This is a perfect example of another idea that just wouldn’t work here in the USA.  Here we would have people hurting the cats.  You would have parents bringing in unruly children that have no business being around animals.  You would have people suing because of allergies.  And you would have a staff that most likely did a poor job of taking care of 50 individual felines. You would just have problems.  Period.  But in Japan, it works.

Eating in Japan was exceptional for many reasons.  I’m mildly adventurous when it comes to food, so it was really nice to see, smell and taste all of these different things.  Tom on the other hand takes it one step further and eats things I simply would not, but it is quite fun to watch either way. From sushi to okonomiyaki, from ramen to rice, all the food I had in Japan was delicious.  I even had a few cheeseburgers while I was there, and they were just as good if not better than an American fast food burger.  It sounds stupid, to eat a burger and fries in Japan, but after a week of eating seafood, you do get a little “fished out”, and a cheeseburger hits the spot like nothing else.  And aside from the few times I stuffed down a familiar Western meal, I realized that I pretty much ate no bread, no high-fructose corn syrup, and very little fried food.  Granted, I was walking miles everyday and getting lots of exercise because of it, I still felt like the food there was healthier, in general.  This was partly due to what I was eating, but also partly to do with the quality of what I was eating.  They just seemed to care, even at First Kitchen, about the quality of what they were serving.

I suppose at the end here I should talk about what I didn’t like about Japan.  When I try to think about it, I am kind of left with a blank.  There wasn’t much about the place that I didn’t like.  But I guess if I have to find something, it would certainly have to be the Japanese tolerance for heat.  Personally, I like my climate cold and dry.  I don’t deal well with heat, and I really have trouble if that heat is accompanied by humidity.  And for our first few days in Japan, we had both.  I was swimming in Kyoto.  Swimming in my own sweat.  My shirt was soaked through.  The moisture in the air for the first two days was thick, and I was basically miserable.  Had I not been having so much fun, and had this new place not been so stimulating and inspiring, I probably would have been a wretched bastard to be around.  After a few days of rain and after we got to Tokyo, the weather cleared up and we had some very nice days.  But what I discovered, is that the Japanese really don’t like to use air conditioning.  Many of the shops and restaurants were sweltering, at least to me.  There was one store, and mind you it was around 72 degrees outside, that literally had the heat cranked.  I really did not enjoy this.  We heard from another foreigner that has been living there for a few years that the Japanese don’t like air conditioning because it circulates germs.  She told us the summers can get pretty nasty.  Basically, she said to avoid coming to Japan in the summer months unless you want to be a sweat hog the entire time. I was already a sweat hog, so I would probably pass out and die in the summer.  No thanks.  I’ll stick to the fall and winter.

In general, Japan was amazing. I want to go back. I could probably take three or four more trips there before I was ready to move onto another different country.  However, could I live in Japan?  Would I want to live in Japan?  I don’t really know.   I definitely could spend some time there.  I think half a year would be great.  Sadly, it will likely be some time before we get back, especially if our economy keeps declining as it has been.  For everyone else, I cannot recommend a trip to Japan highly enough.  If you can find a way to go, do it.  It was the best vacation I have ever been on.