Japan - It's the Little Things

 Well, having written a lot of articles about science and sociology lately, I felt it was time to break for some lighter fare and touch on Japan again, since there is always so much more to say. This is aimed a bit more at those who haven't been here, as a way of trying to explain the nuts and bolts of what it's really like to live in the Land of the Rising Sun. Not just what you might see in travel magazines, mind you, but the weird, quirky stuff that often gets left out – both the good and the bad.

 Beauty and the Olfactory Beast: Japan is a land of contrasts, and one that I frequently can't help but notice is that you will often see beautiful, carefully refined, lovingly maintained gardens...right next to foul-smelling, shabbily maintained, open sewers. Japan in general opts for trench sewers with removable concrete slabs on top, but these slabs aren't air-tight, and so the result is that the smell of raw sewage often permeates the air, especially on hot summer days (which, here in Okinawa, translates to about half of the year). Given that the downside of this is so glaringly obvious, I can't imagine how this is still the general practice, but there it is. If anyone from the public works commission reads this, you should know that we bury our sewers in Canada, and I promise you it works just fine – I beg you to give it a whirl.

 The Culture of Cute: Everything, and I mean everything here has a mascot. A cutesy, cartoony mascot that stares back at you, waving from bank signs, food packages, utility bills, you name it. The Japanese, for some reason, are obsessed with cuteness. Think Hello Kitty. Think Pokemon. Then take that and multiply it a hundred thousand times, and you have some idea. For a few people (some women, and perhaps wildly flamboyant homosexuals) this is a vision of paradise, but for your average male this is like being forced to live out of your 5-year-old sister's room...for as long as you are here. And it's not just limited to the visual...almost every advertisement is delivered in a high-pitched, feminine, cartoonishly cute voice. It's enough to give you cavities. It may also have something to do with why Japanese men tend to drink heavily.

 The Hospitality Duality: I will come right out and verify that it's true what people think about Japan in terms of politeness – the people are almost always impeccably polite, even the students, which is immensely helpful when teaching junior high school, let me tell you. They will go out of their way to make you feel welcome and accommodate your needs, and I mean bend over backwards-type stuff, like “Oh, you need a new scooter to get around? Here, just take this one I have lying around”. THAT BEING SAID, I feel I should also note that as a foreigner, you will never, ever, be accepted completely into Japanese society - that's just how it is. While most Japanese have little exposure to foreigners, and as such develop a sort of fascination with chatting foreigners up when they have the chance, you'll always be an outsider unless you grew up here, especially if you're non-fluent and non-Asian. This just is what it is, and expats learn to deal with it.

 The Land of Peace, Harmony, and Loudspeaker Trucks: While yes, living in Japan may present a few challenges, I find it overall a positive experience. I feel like my job is great, my stress levels are low, and I couldn't be happier...that is, until the loudspeaker trucks drive by. For some reason, it's perfectly legal in this country to bolt speakers onto the top of a van or truck, and just drive around all day, blaring whatever you feel like blaring. We have these people on street corners in Canada sometimes too, but the police typically shoo them away, or lock them up before they can bother too many people. Here, especially during election season, these people go mobile, so that they can annoy almost everybody, excluding perhaps the deaf. In fact, after having to listen to my fiftieth election message of the day despite closed windows, bolted shutters, and the fingers buried knuckle-deep in my ears, there are times that I envy the deaf.

 Reduce, Confuse, Recycle: While Japan does make a reasonably good effort to recycle, how it goes about it is unnecessarily complicated and often baffling, especially for foreigners. While I could pick on any number of public services and institutions that are similarly wrapped in layers of paralyzing bureaucracy, how to sort one's garbage sticks out as one of the most onerous, since one has to deal with it every week. There are, depending on where you are, up to twelve different categories of garbage and recycling, each of which must be sorted, bagged, labelled, washed, and deposited in the right place on the right day. The days, incidentally, can change from week to week, just to keep you on your toes. If one's goal were to create a user-friendly recycling system that would encourage the maximum level of participation, a good first step would be to adopt any approach but this.

 The Ups and Downs of Japanese Cuisine: I love certain Japanese foods, probably the same ones you know from your own home countries, like sushi and tempura, that have made the leap across cultures. There are also some great dishes here that most people outside of Japan don't get to try, like okonomiyaki (a sort of omelette/pancake thing with fish, veggies and a yummy sauce). However, there are some downright weird things on the menu here too. For one, mayonnaise goes on everything. I don't know how it got so popular, but it goes in salads, on pizza, and there are walls of it in every supermarket. There is also a tendency to pickle all manner of foods that I just don't understand - not once have I eaten any of these dishes and subsequently felt happy about the decision. I find that a westerner can eat here by hunting down a modest selection of western staples and supplementing it creatively, but there are entire aisles that I have to bypass in the supermarket because I have absolutely no clue what to do with half of it, and the other half just makes me want to scream “WHY?!”.

 Japan is a unique place, full of culture and history, and I chose to live here not once but twice because I do love it, despite its many foibles. A lot of expats that choose to live here, as “Japanophiles”, tend to paint a rosy picture, but after all, this is a blog and not a travel brochure, so I prefer to offer a slightly more...nuanced view. Should you visit Japan? Yes, definitely, there's no other country like it. Is it perfect? No. As in any country, there is always room for improvement, but hey, at least the sushi is fresh.