Notes on Japan
alexanderweichart.de
alexanderweichart.de
- In larger cities there are Konbinis _everywhere_. As in: You can barely walk a block without encountering one in the more busy areas. Sometimes there are three within a 30m Radius.
- Most fruits (except bananas or Kaki when in season) are pretty expensive.
- Package sizes in supermarkets are often smaller that in europe, so if you are used to buying 1 or 2kg bags of frozen veggies you'll have to go to Costco.
- People make due with much less space here than in europe. Tiny apartments everywhere.
- Most single detached family homes in residential areas of Tokyo usually have no garden.
- Even though a lot of places look like they have not changed since the 80s, they are suprisingly well maintained and clean.
- There are basically no public trashbins except at some train stations or in konbinis (which often makes me feel like I need to buy something else to justify throwing stuff away).
- Lots of people wear masks casually (not judging whether thats good or bad)
- Food is not only cheap but usually tastes amazing. I have not even once gone anywhere (from cheap chain to upscale sushi place) an was disappointed.
- You do get 日本語上手 (Nihongo Jouzu = your japanese is good) a lot even if you just say Hello in japanese.
- Trains here are usually really punctual, go frequently and during rush hour are unbearably crowded. It's kind of a miracle that people don't start fighting constantly and everyone is just somehow accepting the fact that they are forcefully pushed around on the train.
- The japanese people I met are are almost all incredibly nice, once you break the ice. They are so mindful of others feelings and needs and really good at reading people.
Does make me wonder if people's behaviour towards litter (aka taking it home more often) would have been different had these events never happened.
It's more of a cost reduction move. As an example Paris kept trash bins after the terrorist attacks, albeit they adapted them to the situation (either they're bomb resistant or made light and transparent)
Tokyo or London could do the same, if they cared enough.
It's worth mentioning that masks were in relatively common usage in Japan long before the COVID pandemic. (I have no anecdata whether usage was increased since.)
Years ago I flew on (I think) JAL and was amused to receive a face-mask in the small free package of in-flight goodies provided to each person.
I do. There are a LOT more masks now than before the pandemic (caveat: I'm not in Tokyo, maybe it's different there, but probably not)
This is also the case in America, except the "well maintained and clean" part.
On our trip earlier this year, my wife and sister in law really got hooked on the random convenience store food.
> therefore, you will probably be treated as one, even if aren’t
Myself and a couple friends visited Japan for a couple weeks in 2008. On a trip to Osaka, one of my friends was approached by a gaggle of school girls. It was “speak to a foreigner day” at their school, and apparently of our group, the lone female seemed the most approachable. They asked her a series of questions about where she was from and her life in very basic English and took furious notes.
I can’t imagine telling a class in even the safest parts of the United States “Go wander the streets and interview a stranger you suspect to be foreign”, for a number of reasons.
The other thing I want to note is just that you get a lot of leeway as a foreigner in Japan. We’d gotten on a train unknowingly that our JR pass didn’t cover, but figured it out on the train. Well right as we get off, the ticket inspector is there inspecting tickets. We feign ignorance and show him our JR passes, he patiently writes something like ¥500 on a piece of paper and shows us, we pay it. No anger is expressed, just more of a “silly foreigners” vibe.
That was my experience traveling around Japan.
There's an interesting caveat to it. Back when I studied Japanese, I had a Japanese teacher. But she never lived in Japan - she was born of Japanese parents living abroad.
Anyway, she used to tell me that for her, visiting Japan was a lot less welcoming, because they cut no slack to her. She looks Japanese, sounds Japanese, so everyone expected her to be very mindful of all social norms, and would be harsh to her whenever she made a faux-pas.
They love Japan and have kept their Japanese citizenship, but all the rules and expectations were overbearing, so for them there are a lot of pros and cons to the two countries. And they call out that for foreigners, they get to see many of the pros but fewer of the cons.
In the US of course it isn't even just the overblown "stranger danger" hysteria of school children speaking to people they don't know but identifying "foreigners" due to the greater ethnic diversity in the US. And people get (justifiably) offended when asked "where are you from?" especially if they were born here and just happen to be of non-European descent.
Why is it justifiable? Is curiosity an offense?
Usually being fed up with asked "where are you really from?" with the implication "go back there" lots and lots of times in their lives.
I’m in California and it’s somewhat unusual for someone to be native Californian.
I wasn't offended at all, of course, but funny how context changes everything... I was actually worried they'd be "disappointed" at me for not speaking their native language.
That used to happen to me in Germany, even though my German is limited to "noch ein Bier, bitte." Whereas in France (where I lived as a kid and used to have native fluency), people would immediately switch to English. I asked one Frenchman, "why?" The answer was, "You sound French but you look Australian or maybe South African." "No, I'm American." "That can't be; Americans don't speak French like that."
A lot has changed. Foreigners no longer have this "superiority".
> telling a class in even the safest parts of the United States
It is just histeria, look at recent trend of "men vs bear in forest" . Many parts of US are totally safe, the worst part are dogs, car accidents and voluntary drug ingestion!
According to Washington Post [1], the US police killed 1,162 people in 2023, which is about 0.3 per every 100,000 Americans.
I.e., an American is more likely to be killed by a cop than a Japanese person is likely to be killed by a murderer.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
It's still a long ago (2015 in my case) but it happened the exact same thing in Nara to my wife and me.
CD shops everywhere
malls are thriving
people use fat laptops"
Also, if you're considering "living" in Japan (which is a totally different beast from visiting as a tourist), here's a hypothetical scenario. See how you feel the first time you read it.
You, alongwith a group of friends/group tour members are walking down the street towards the station to go to your next (sightseeing) destination in Tokyo. Assume none of your friends/group tour members are ill-meaning (as in, they don't behave like bad tourists, littering the streets, being loud because they want to etc.).
Now, assume that the group you are with is being louder than other locals around you, possibly because they are in good spirits after a good meal or sightseeing experience. What is your way of thinking:
a) Do you realize that your group is being louder than other locals around you?
b) If you realize so, do you still not feel anything and keep walking with the group?
c) Or do you feel uncomfortable that your group is being louder than others around you, and want to distance yourself away from your group?
If you're more inclined towards c), then your way of thinking is closer to the Japanese people.
Source: had the same experience when I visited Japan over 10 years ago for the first time, and I was so uncomfortable it felt like torture just walking with the same group.
Japan, for better or worse, is "unique" in many ways even today, including how people think and behave. It's not for everyone, but if you think the article's observations and the scenario above are something you like and want to be a part of, you'll likely not have too much of a hard time adapting to life here.
Also, if time and energy permits, please, learn the language. It'll expand your world so much here.
My opinion: Even taking ten hours to learn a few polite phrases makes a Japanese trip infinitely better. It signifies to Japanese people that you're trying to understand them and they very much love it.
except for manga, it's the same in public transportation in many countries.
I am a naturalized US citizen and I don’t have Japanese family or something like that.
So from that pov, what was it like? How did you do it?
I went to Japan and it was honestly the best place I’ve been. As a brown guy I felt so welcomed and people were so kind to me. Not to mention it’s so clean and orderly.
Fwiw I’m a software engineer with a decade of experience.
I have a business degree.
I've met from the "top" of US hierarchy; white Harvard graduate (parents both from Harvard) who get to live very nice life with wide availability of choices, to the "lows", Latino high-school dropout from the ghetto. Those two both love living here, for different reasons, while a lot of people coming here working as English teachers just loath the place and leave after 3-4 years.
All in all I think (like most places) it really depends on 3 things, what job(income) you can get, what social circle you'll find, and what expectations you have in the place (and your life).
The most content ones I've met is well paid engineers married with kids. Having kids just makes you part of the community so much easier. Also being an engineer from US probably means you're not that annoyed by work culture (compared to say Europe). The safety is ofc incomparably better and most people get used to being perpetually treated as "the foreigner"; people that can't get over the latter, usually sooner or later, will start to resent the place.
Since the majority of Americans coming to Japan to live, is white college graduate who end up as English teacher (horrible job with bad pay), they start to loathe the place after the honeymoon phase. Online forum is filled with these types so staying away from those is also crucial ( I'm looking at r/japanlife)
Care to elaborate?
But still, the work is a bit more hectic and you're expected to prioritize work when required (deadlines etc). Also not as much paid leave. Which is not too different from the what's plausible in US, but in Europe this attitude is often strongly frowned upon, even in tech, so it might be an absolute deal breaker
I can't help about the paperwork, but the general sentiment is that the "I felt so welcomed and people were so kind to me" part is only on the surface. Tourists are very welcome in tourist places, not so much elsewhere, and don't mistake politeness for kindness. One common theme when at work is that as a "gaijin", if something goes wrong, it is always your fault, even if you speak Japanese perfectly (a must), and even if you have citizenship (note that Japan doesn't allow multiple citizenship).
Racism (xenophobia, actually) is very present, but in a more insidious manner than in the west. It doesn't mean Japan is a bad place to live in, cleanliness and order are real things, and the low crime rate is very appreciable. Politeness is nice too, but it goes together with hypocrisy, so if you value things like consideration, harmony, and agreement, Japan may be for you, but if instead, you value honesty, directness and to confront ideas, maybe not so much.
I grew up in California and moved to Japan forty-one years ago, at the age of twenty-six. I have lived here ever since.
As others in this thread have noted, everyone is different. In my case, what has kept me here is having learned the language well after I arrived, entering first one career (translation) and then, twenty years later, another (in academia) for which my language ability and my understanding of the culture were essential, having and raising a family here, continuing to find the country and culture interesting, and finding a comfortable living situation. Now Japan feels like home and I can’t imagine leaving.
However, I have known a lot of people who started out similar to me but who ended up leaving after a while. I don’t want to generalize about them, either, but there are some characteristics I have noticed among Americans who didn’t stay: They didn’t learn the language well, or they couldn’t find jobs that suited them, or they were annoyed at always being treated like a foreigner (more common in the countryside than in the cities), or they had aging parents back home, or they just felt homesick.
For me, I was interested in learning the language and experiencing a new culture, and so it was a blast. If you're not interested in those things, you will likely not last more than a few years (though I do know a few foreigners here who've been here 10+ years without learning a lick of Japanese).
The company I joined helped a lot with getting a bank account and phone number and such. Those tasks can be hard without help, although it's practically a meme at this point so I think it's easier now, as companies try to fill that gap. Another meme is that it's hard to find a place to rent as a foreigner. This might be somewhat true, but it's never happened to me and so I think it's a bit outdated.
Overall it's very comfortable. Sometimes too much so I think - nobody takes risks and so nothing really changes. I do like being able to go almost anywhere without a car.
There will be a ton of papers to deal with, including some banks that apparently aren't open to US citizens (probably because of taxation ?), but I don't think it's much more than for most countries on the globe.
Speaking/Writing will also be a big part of it, but it's not insurmountable. You'll survive without it for a while (you've found a company willing to hire you anyway), and probably spend a few years learning before being fully proficient (reading contracts etc.)
PS: I'm not american, so there's a bunch of details I might be missing but I haven't heard of specific troubles on that front.
What level JLPT do you have?
Edit: patio11 blog https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...
when entering a “clean space”, like a home or even a fitting room,
take off your shoes
Also, massively unhygienic for various fungus that loves damp warm places on your toe nails or between toes.
As a Northern German: this is not normal?
Trying to talk to random people in London you get weird looks. A small town further out in the country, hope you're not in a rush as they'll talk your ear off.
But in that city there were still multiple "centers" - the local pub, couple of shops and whatever - Being the European style town that was actually like 15 different villages that slowly merged. Perhaps because of this it really acted as multiple smaller towns in many ways.
There's probably quite a big variation based on local culture, density and other things, but I'm pretty sure it's a trend by size.
As someone who visited Japan for the first time 23 years ago, and has been living there (here?) for more than 10 years, there is much less staring now than there used to be, probably because of numbers. There are a lot more foreigners around now.
My favorite "Notes on Japan" was Dave Barry Does Japan[0].
[0] https://www.davebarry.com/book-page.php?isbn13=9780449908105