Japanese...um...Culture?

Gangs?? I wouldnt call them gangs exactly. I think they're mostly kids. Society doesnt pay attention to kids a lot here, unless its to badger them on their tests or blame them for something (at least, that is what they think). So they get attention by driving around on their motorcycles at night, revving them constantly, annoyingly, loudly, probably bad for the bike, and they get chased by the police a lot. But they still do it. Every night. But actually, other than the noise, they dont cause that much trouble, except to fight amongst themselves. Someone asked "didnt the bousozoku come from America?" No, no. In America, they'd just be shot. Sad but true.

Drunken (dead?) Men: When walking down the major arcade at night, Cary and I stumbled on a businessman laying on the ground. This happens sometimes. Strange thing was he was alone, his friends had either left him or he had no friends. A woman tried to wake him up, called to him, then bent down to take his pulse. She couldn't find it, she told us. Cary asked if he should call an ambulance and the woman looked at him as if he were a silly silly boy. "no no," she said, "he's still warm."

Porn Booths: See, you think you're getting into a regular phone booth and you shut the door behind you and suddenly you're surrounded on all sides by tousled, mostly or all naked young Asian women. I bet girls dont even bother wondering why men dont call them. They probably forget their own numbers as soon as they get in.

For opening a bank account with Hiroshima Ginkou, I was given as a thank you present... A roll of aluminum foil. When I opened at a new branch, I was given a box of laundry detergent.

The buses are so not ontime here. The bus I ride on Tuesday has been both late and early, but never on time. Have had to wait and run after it. (yes I really did).

Food with heads is a difficult thing for me. It stares at you and begs "save me, don't eat me." I can not fathom eating something that can look back at you... Did manage to get one tiny shrimp down, but from now on I stand firm in my headless diet.

Did you know to work with food in Japan you have to give... a stool sample?? I can understand I guess, food prep is really important and you must be hygenically sound but...you make the food with your hands not with..well..you know. Even for a school festival, Mayu & Aya had to give one.

Santa Claus . The store. Open year round and has nothing to do with Christmas.

The parking garages are giant ferris wheels . You pull up your car into the single, inky dinky space and get out. The garage revolves. You don't look for your car, you just walk up and say "hey I'm #7" and they press button and you see car after car being lowered and then ker-chunk! There's your car.

CDs, ladies and gentlemen, are 32 dollars. Singles are 10 or 15.

Cheap, special night movies are 10 dollars.

Planes cause expansion . The dress shoes I brought no longer fit my feet. Is second pair of shoes that do not fit. Also the large chest/shrunken shirt incident. Contrarywise, my pants are feeling too big. Shall dub this phenomenon: Plane Puffiness Paradox.

Girls there have their fads, just like anywhere else. When I was there, they wore short skirts and insanely large boots (which incidentally caused them to walk like awkward, bobbing ducks), blue eyeshadow, white lipstick and blond hair. Black hair...where?? It is becoming more and more rare. Most everyone has dyed streaked hair in any color but plain black. I'd guess like 50% have not black hair. The thing is, most schools and almost all job interviews demand black hair. So they market black temporary dye to camoflauge their dyed hair. The holidays of Christmas and New Year's are switched in relevence. In AMERICA Christmas is the most important, it is also a family holiday, whereas New Year's Eve is a boyfriend/girlfriend holiday. In JAPAN New Year's is the most important holiday that is spent with the family. Christmas is the night you spend with your significant other. Usually, couples will buy an exhorbitantly priced but very pretty Christmas Cake. It is treated as a normal day though, and foreign folk working in Japan do not get the day off work. Most people already know that when you go to a Japanese home, you take off your shoes at the door and walk around in slippers or stocking feet, so as not to bring outside dust indoors. What is strange to me is this: even in homes with westernstyle toilets, you must take your slippers off at the bathroom door and step into a different pair of slippers, the hideous bathroom slippers. Bathroom slippers are often made of the same fabric or design as the fabric scheme of the bathroom. And then, of course, you take the hideous bathroom slippers off when you leave the bathroom and put the first pair of slippers back on. 7-11 may have come from America, but the Japanese have pushed the convenience store through a marvelous transformation. Not just 7-11 of course, but skads of others convenience stores, like Lawson Station. They are clean (no really), and sell a variety of ready-to-eat foods from sandwhiches to riceballs to curryboxe, as well as providing the magazines and batteries and emergency hairspray that could be needed at any moment. Japan does not have soap operas. No, it really doesnt. They have dramas of the two types we have in America: daytime and evening. However, whereas American soap operas go on and on for years and years, never dying even when its clear they should, Japanese dramas last for an average of one season. Sometimes -rarely- two seasons. Abundance of tiny little snacky-cake like things in convenient packaging. Small cute boxes hold chocolates, cookies, strawberry flavors, coffee flavors, anything everything. Paused to look at info on side of Petit Mont-blanc food's nutritional information and almost fell over and died. Am not, by far, a nutritional expert but would have formerly thought it humanly impossible...box was 315 Kcal. Kcal. I hope that is not like the metric conversion else have eaten several thousand calories in one snack. Spent about $20.00 per day on commuting + a tiny lunch. As a basically miserly person, I found this painful and unnatural as thousands of Yen went by like it wasn' no thang. For more insight, go to Dan in Japan's Observations ---- Email | Main