Personal impression of Japan

Japan is like no other country. It is a country of contrasts. You can see highly sophisticated technologies and gadgets to writing tickets and notes by hand. Also people can be helpful and polite but when you are on the street or in the public transport they can go and kill you with rudeness.

The toilets – a favorite example. So the Japanese toilets have a lot of buttons, heated seats, bidet and toilet in one, and other options – I have no clue what they are but you are faced with a lot of buttons in many cases. At the same time… in many museums and public places, you have limited number of Western toilets (understand normal like Europeans at least without buttons) and a lot of Japanese style toilets which are like a hole on the floor!

In restaurants you do not have napkins; same is valid for many washrooms – no tissue whatsoever.

The Japanese society is extremely male centered! It is pathetic but true. You understand how equality is not present in this country.

The Japanese and English – a combination hardly available. It has been difficult experience and sometimes painful because people hardly speak English and cannot understand English – even the young ones.

Seeing (young) people dressed in suites in black with white shirt is like breathing. No clue why but those people dress the same way for work and it is quite boring.

Food – as much as I love sushi and other Japanese cuisine, some sweets and certain foods are not my cup of tea at all. Using brown beans as sweets and in deserts is typical. Some greenish balls that look like olives – one of the worst sweets I’ve ever tried.

Japanese could be very nice and polite. A few times people asked us if we need help and assisted us, a few times they even walked with us to show us where the place in demand is. The body language is extremely important in some of the cases though – right, left, straight and all that – have fun! But when it comes to public transit.. oh, boy! Nightmare comes true. Or even walking on the streets – rudeness!

And bicycle riders – if they were in Basel, they would be bankrupt. Those people bike only on the pedestrian areas and it is dangerous because you don’t see it, and they don’t really care. I feel threaten with them and that’s no joke. You don’t know where they’ll come from and you have less and less space to walk. It is one of the most unpleasant experiences here.

Another characteristic of the Japanese – when you enter temples, you cannot take pictures in the buildings. Plus, they just walk like in a demonstration, not many pictures, you wonder if they enjoy it at all. The same is in the gardens – they create those above-human gardens and parks, all trees and even the grass is properly cut and cared for, but they just pass by… I wonder how they get the inspiration and create those beautiful scenes and if there are a lot of emotions in them.

Cell phones – you can hardly people talk on cell phones and in the Tokyo subway, it is even forbidden to use them and the sound should be off!

The Japanese have a lot of rules and traditions and like it was written in a book, we the tourists should try to follow the 2 most important and the rest – it is recommended but the locals know that we are the barbarians and will ignore us. Well, in certain patterns (like the public transit and biking), I find them barbarian more than us but those are the cultural differences I suppose.