It took about four months, but early on in October living in Japan has finally stopped feeling like a super long vacation. I mean, by no means have I explored all there is to see in Osaka let alone the rest of Japan, but I've been to most of the big iconic places and touristy spots, and I've grown accustomed to many of the eccentricities of Japan. Combine that with a pretty regular work schedule, and I've gotten into a pretty steady routine in my day-to-day, week-to-week life here in Osaka.
Now that I'm approaching five months (half my contract!) in Japan, I've learned a lot about the Japanese people and their way of life. On that note, here are five things I think Japan gets right and five things I think it doesn't do so well. Let's start with the good things:
- Transportation
Before I got to Japan, it had been about eight years since I'd ridden a bike. I knew some people in college that used them, and you'll see a few cyclists in Chicago now and then, but bikes are everywhere in Japan. I use mine just about every day to get to and from work and around my neighborhood, and I truly couldn't imagine not having one while I'm here, as it seems like this place was built for bikes. Whenever and wherever I end up back in the states, I'm certain that I'll be getting a bike to get around.
If I'm not riding my bike around Osaka, I'm taking a train. The train and subway system is really great in Japan, as it's pretty easy to get to pretty much anywhere by train. I've taken trains to all over Osaka, nearby cities, and even not-so-nearby cities as well. They're super reliable, clean, and fast, and if it's ever running late (which is rare), they hand out slips of paper at the station to give to your boss to excuse you if you're late for work. In Chicago, the el is unreliable, inefficiant, and usually smells like piss, and it only gets you around Chicago. The Metra to the suburbs is slow and expensive and doesn't run all that often outside of rush hour. Obviously in states we're dealing with a much bigger country that is less densely populated, but nonetheless the public transit system leaves much to be desired, and Chicago (and probably other cities I'm less familiar with) could learn a thing or two from Japan. - Convenience Stores
In the U.S., convenience stores are pretty much junk food/lottery ticket/cigarette stores. While the convenience stores in Japan certainly sell those things as well, they also offer a bunch of other services that make them truly convenient. You can pay gas/electric/phone bills, deliver packages, take out cash, buy tickets to local concerts/events, print/make copies, and get some pretty delicious food that was prepared that day. When I first arrived here I was baffled by the sheer amount of convenience stores here, but after just a few weeks of living here it made sense, as I found myself going to them several times a week at least.
- Waste Management/Recycling
The last apartment building I lived in back in Chicago didn't have any recycling at all. There was one big-ass dumpster behind the building for garbage, and if you wanted to recycle, you had to take it to a recycling center yourself, which is hard when you don't have a car. Even for places that do have recycling, you don't have to separate the recyclables and you can still throw recyclables in the garbage. In Japan, waste management is a big deal, and people need to separate their recyclables into all sorts of kinds. There's the obvious cans, glass, and cardboard, but plastic containers are separate from plastic bottles, which are also separate from plastic bottle caps. If any of this is sorted incorrectly, and if you have recyclable materials in your garbage, the garbage man will not take your trash. Even public garbage cans at train stations and such have several different bins for different kinds of materials, and I'm pretty sure that businesses and restaurants need to follow similar rules, which, having worked in two restaurants in Chicago, is way less wasteful than American restaurants. It's a wonderful thing that Japan prioritizes recycling so much and instills that in its citizens, the U.S. could learn a thing or two from Japan about holding its people responsible to be less wasteful. - Toilets
I can't really speak for toilets in less populated rural areas of Japan, but in Osaka and other big cities, their toilets are the shit, y'all. (Pun intended. Sorry.) At the very least, most toilets I've seen contain two flush settings, small and big, which is already less wasteful than in the U.S. But some toilets in Japan have all sorts of functions. The one in Starbucks in Shinsaibashi, for example, has several different spray functions that differ in pressure and direction including "bidet," heated seats, flushing sounds if you need a little help getting it going, and music and other ambient noise to try and cover up any sounds your butt might be making. Seriously, they're not messing around with these toilets, y'all. - Babies
I don't know what it is, but Japanese babies and toddlers are just cuter than babies from anywhere else. They just are. One thing that I think helps is a ton of little Japanese kids have super dorky haircuts, like a bowl cut for instance. I've seen lots of little Japanese three year-olds with bowl cuts and they're so cute my head nearly explodes each time.
I mean, come on. He's out-cuting a deer right now.
Things that aren't so great about Japan:
- Plastic wrapping on everything
While Japan is great about recycling, they are pretty wasteful when it comes to packaging. Pretty much everything comes wrapped in cellophane here, even individual bananas at convenience stores. You can buy a bag of cookies, and each cookie in the bag will be in its own individual plastic wrapper. It's insane. Japan, cool it on the plastic wrapping. - Bread and Cheese
Look, I get it, most of their carb intake is from rice. The thing is, Japan still has a lot of bread. It just only has white bread. Occasionally, you can find a wheat bread that is slightly darker than the white bread. Also, with most loaves of bread, the slices are so thick that you'd never want to make a sandwich with two of them, it's just too much bread. They do get points for not including the butt of the loaf in the package. I guess that's pretty wasteful, but I don't like eating the butt of the loaf anyway. But everything else about the bread here is just a travesty.
I don't think I need to say much about the cheese here, because I've mentioned several times how hard it is to find good cheese. I just feel sad for Japan, really. They don't know what they're missing. - Bureaucracy/Strict adherence to rules no matter what
Alright, time to get real. Japan is all about following rules. You don't question it, even if it doesn't make sense or appear to have any reason behind it, you just follow the rules no matter what. People will wait at a crosswalk for two minutes for the light to change when there are no cars coming. I mostly encounter this problem at work. Bless them, our stage assistants are just doing their jobs and trying to make sure our costumes and microphones stay in good condition. But it boggles my mind when, for instance, we have to put on a white lab coat over our costume in order to eat even a single almond. Rules seem to be made here to prevent issues from ever happening, instead of just dealing with issues as they happen. But there are so many rules sometimes that it makes things a little more frustrating than they need to be.
Workplaces in Japan seem to have a lot of bureaucracy. We constantly get information from stage assistants with new rules or policies that seem a little ridiculous, but we have no idea who made these decisions or why, as they were passed down and passed down to stage assistants who are essentially just messengers. If we have a shift change request we have a complicated form to fill out that must get approved, and two girls in particular have spent weeks trying to fix a shift change request that has issues getting approved. It's been a big headache for them and I'm sure that if we weren't in Japan, it wouldn't be a big deal. - Money/ATMs
I thought before coming here that Japan would be super high-tech and everyone would be using debit cards or something even easier, but everyone still uses cash for almost all transactions here in Japan. Also, ATMs don't work at night, so if you need cash, you have to get it out between 7am and 9pm, or something like that. - Sexism
This is a pretty big subject to tackle, and I know I haven't experienced it firsthand, but I get a sense from being in Japan that old-fashioned, sexist attitudes still exist here, as much or even more than in the states. The one example I notice is that most subway trains have one car designated as Women Only. The idea is to provide women with a safe car on the train because men groping women on trains is a big problem here. It sounds like a nice solution, but really it treats the problem as if its inevitable, as if men are going to grope women no matter what, so if you don't want to be groped you have to get on a separate car. It helps some women feel safe for a while, but it does nothing to discourage the sexist perverts from groping women in the first place. I've also heard that in Japan, raising children is pretty much entirely the mother's job, and she's expected to put her career on hold in order to be a full-time mother. This is still a problem in the U.S. too, but it seems like we're making progress toward abandoning that old-fashioned attitude and encouraging mothers to continue their careers and fathers to take on an equal share of the parenting. Japan is just a little farther behind on these attitudes, and it doesn't seem to be making much progress.
Well, there you have it. Let me know what you think, or if you've been to Japan, let me know what you'd add to either list. Now to update y'all on what I've been up to these past few weeks.
I already mentioned the tennis tournament I went to, but I went again later that week to see the final, where Australia's Sam Stosur won the title against a young up-and-comer from Kazakhstan named Zarina Diyas.
After the match Sam hit some signed balls into the stands, and when I yelled "Yo, Sam!" she looked up and hit one in my direction
Pretty sick souvenir! Thanks Sam!
We stuck around for the doubles final after, and a Japanese native teamed up with a Czech girl to win the title, giving local fans something to cheer about
My friend took me to this pancake place in Shinsaibashi for brunch one weekend called Very Fancy, and it's quickly become one of my favorites for a good breakfast. We may have gone two days in a row.
First time we went I got a pancake topped with a fried egg, bacon, and cheddar cheese, which is pretty hard to find in Japan, so that was quite a treat. The next day we came back I tried a sandwich (with pancakes instead of bread) that had shrimp, avocado, onion, and some creamy green sauce. Totemo oishii.
They also sell homemade granola. How cute!
There's a Costco that's sorta hard to get to, but I tagged along with three people who planned a trip and had a spot open for the cab ride home.
Quinoa, crackers, organic strawberry jam, Einstein bagels, chicken sausage, pepperjack cheese, frozen berries, and of course some Blue Moon.
A poster of a Japanese boy band, seen in Shinsaibashi
Also seen in Shinsaibashi, little sumo dudes displaying purses for sale
I wonder if Tommy Lee Jones knows his face is on a vending machine in Japan
The little koala snacks I like so much had a new flavor: sweet potato. Honestly, it didn't really taste like sweet potato (Japanese sweet potatoes are purple on the outside, and yellow on the inside, and don't taste nearly as good as the orange ones you'd find in the states). Oddly enough the flavor of these reminded me more of a plain Eggo waffle.
