NICK: Not better or worse,just very very different

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  Okazaki, Japan
Monday, March 20, 2006

(This one turned out really long, sorry)

More Japanese language studying.

My shoulders are super sore. Actually, my everything is super sore. I'm trying to adjust to the Japanese way of living. Basically, my shoulders hurt because the only place that I have to study that doesn't make me feel like I"m intruding on anyone's space is in my room. There is no furniture in my room. This means that I study laying (propped up on my elbows) on top of my futon, which is aproximately 1.5 inches of padding on top of a grass mat.

Hence, my shoulders hurt.

I should be capable of handling pain and difficulty, I'm Japanese

01 My ninja impression

. There's a lot of things in this country that I've noticed (either I'm seeing odd exceptions or this country is odd) that ppl agree to.

*SITTING*
Traditionally, the Japanese home doesn't have chairs, just tables and such. This has changed in modern homes with the chairless rooms confined to the tatami (grass mat) rooms. These rooms are for having guests, buddha worship, or in my case, sleeping. However, the "proper" way that you sit while sitting in a tatami room is on a little 18 inch squared cushion, with your legs folded under you.

I'll tell you right now, this HURTS.

I don't know how Japanese culture has endured it for hundreds, nay, thousands of years. I sat with Michiyo's friends from church (watching them perform some praying, don't worry, I made sure not to interrupt) and they sat in the proper position for 45 mins, WITHOUT MOVING.

After 10 mins, my legs were asleep. I tried to ignore it, not wanting to bother the praying, but I wasn't successful. The pain (and the worry of the blood never returning to my legs) made me shift to a cross-legged position.

I asked Michiyo about it and she said "everyone's legs were asleep. It hurts to sit like that for a long time. We just ignore it."

Michiyo's mom and another elderly lady could handle it and I wimp out after 10 mins

02 Can you find the three streets?

.

I'm such a wuss.

I'm attributing this position to the reason why so many Japanese women are pigeon-toed. They stumble along rather funnily, and very very un-sexily.

But they have nice shoes (-:

*JAPANESE STREETS*
There are some cities, like Kyoto, that have a chinese-style grid pattern to them, however, most streets in Japan are like spiderwebs - spiderwebs like in those drug experiments where they gave the spider crack. There's no order.

This makes driving, giving directions, and navigating north/south/east/west near impossible. You can't tell someone to follow a road and turn left at the Circle K because there are a million Circle K's. Do you turn left BEFORE Circle K, or AFTER, and is it the road going perpindicular, or the one at 37 degrees to the road? In addition, there are no street names, no house numbers, and the major roads cross each other at random locations

03 the "Who needs a man" pillows

. I'm assuming that this is all tradition, left over from the days when the city was really old. Tokyo is a driving nightmare: roads blocked due to traffic, roads blocked due to construction, cars on the left side of the road, no street names, dogs being friends with cats, the sky is falling, etc.

It's just bad.

*RECYCLING*
Recycling is extensive here; there are multiple bins for your recycling needs. What amazes me is how complicated it is. You have:

-burnables, these are your non-recyclable paper, food stuff, yard waste. This is collected at a neighborhood collection point - see above about no house numbers, how would the trashman get to your house?

-non-burnables, this is basically things like small non-recyclable plastics bags, saran wrap, cans, bottles. These are picked up on a different day.

-PET (soda) bottles, plastic bags, 2 liter bottles, which must be washed, dried, and labels removed. These are taken to the grocery store.

-Stryofoam, these are trays like the ones your beef comes on, etc. These must also be washed and taken to the grocery store.

-Newspapers, magazines, boxes must be bundled with string and flattened

04 A little more Engrish..

. These must be taken to another recycling location, not the grocery store. It's only available on Thursdays around here in some parking lot.

-Batteries, have many locations that they're picked up at.

It's no wonder that there's so much trash on the streets. There's also no trashcans on the street, probably so ppl don't dump their crap in those cans.

John just takes his trash to the base to let the military decide what to do with it.

Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this.

*OVERWRAPPING*
I've known that the Japanese love their wrapping, but it didn't really sink in until this trip. It's un-frickin-believable how much wrapping they use for one rice cracker. It's good to have aesthetics, I like pretty things, too. But the idea of hygenic purposes is overboard. Imagine a package of Oreos, now put 2 cookies into a plastic tray, put that tray into it's own little package with a little dessicant packet, put that into a plastic tray, and put that into Oreo-labeled wrapping, then put that into a plastic shopping bag.

That's a lot of wrapping to undo for 2 cookies.

*BATHROOM USAGE*
Ok, I'm back on the bathrooms again

05 The proper sitting position

. For a country that is OBSESSED with cleanliness, I find it humorous that I see fewer men wash their hands after using the bathroom than in the US. I've heard that rinsing is usually all you need to get rid of most of the bacteria.

They don't even do that.

It probably stems from the fact that they give you little warm towelettes to wipe your hands clean when you eat, but still, I find it sort of gross.

I've seen bathrooms where there's no ass-gaskets for the toilet seats, they have an anti-microbial gel that you put on a tissue and wipe the seat down with. Kind of a neat idea. Cuts down on paper, I guess.. scrubbing down a toilet seat is not something that I'd say I'd be happy to do.

*NAPKINS*
Japanese restaurants typically are stingy with napkins. At the coffee shop, I was the one who put the sign on the napkin dispenser "NAPKINS = TREES, use sparingly," so I'm a big fan of not wasting napkins, but napkins are hard to come by here. They also feel like plastic. Easiest remedy is to buy a handkerchief at the 100Yen shop and use that. I almost think that restaurants are somehow tied to 100Yen shops.

*CDs*
Apparently, you can _rent_ CDs at certain stores. I knew that you could do this 14 years ago, but that was before CD burners came out

06 Siren

. Apparently there's a lot of trust in the consumer here. 'nuff said.

*DISPOSABLE CHOPSTICKS*
I'd never thought of it until I read it in my travel guide - the Japanese use 24 billion waribashi (disposable chopsticks) a year. Think of how many trees that is. Some waribashi also include a toothpick. WOW. On the contrary, I'd like to see the number of napkins and plastic forks used in the US in a year.

*MASKS*
When someone gets sick, they're supposed to wear a surgical mask. This makes sense, but it doesn't make sense that they cough into their hands. It also doesn't make sense that they pull the mask down over their chin a lot to talk.

I guess it's more to look polite, than it is for practical reasons. I bought one just to look cool since I was slightly sick. If they really kept ppl from getting sick, no one would ever need one, since no one would get sick from contact anyone else, right?

*BEEF*
I don't get it

07 Cosplay magazine

. I'm not complaining since I just do as the locals do, but the beef is incredibly fatty. I don't know if the Japanese palate really likes copious amounts of fat in their meals, but the meat that I've had has had huge amounts of what we call gristle on it. I just ignore it, happy to be eating any beef, as it's bloody expensive here. Also, chopsticks make it REALLY difficult to separate the beef from the fat, and there's so much of it, I'd have more leftover fat than beef that I'd eaten.

Maybe the butchers have advertised the lower-quality beef as being the best. That would be the Aussies telling them that since they don't buy American beef. Forget Kobe beef, that's probably something like $40/lb.

mmm.. beef.

*BEDS*
I believe most ppl here have western-style beds rather than futons, giving in to comfort over tradition, but I'm really surprised that I haven't seen any beds larger than a twin. I'd imagine that they're not big sellers with the size of Japanese houses (We had to push John's full-sized mattress thru the upstairs window in the guest room so Ash and I could sleep in there). I've only seen Japanese blankets that could handle a full-sized bed.

Do Japanese couples not sleep together? Msybe I haven't been in a ritzy enough furniture store.

*SIREN*
This one is probably odd for the rest of the country, but here in Okazaki there's a siren that blares at 6am, 12pm, 6am, and 9pm, on weekdays

08 Alternative-fashion magazine

. It's an air raid-style siren, from WWII it sounds like. Michiyo says that it's from the time when the people didn't have watches and were working out in the fields. The siren told them that it was time to start, time for lunch, time to stop and I guess the 9pm one is for going to bed.. no idea. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper so the siren doesn't wake me up.

Anyways, this siren doesn't really bother me, but it confuses me as to why they still use it - everyone has a watch now. I can understand if it was a monk on the top of a tower ringing a bell. This is (obviously run by a timer) an air-raid siren that blares really loudly and can't be older than 70 years.

Another one of those odd tradition things.

I'll try to record it with my camera.

*PARKING SPACES*
Japanese parking lots look like car dealerships. All the cars are backed into their parking spots. This is true for probably 95% of the time. Some parking spots tell you not to back in because the houses on the other side of the fence don't want exhaust coming in their windows.

But, people do it anyways.

Oddly enough, people also point their shoes outward when they put them in the shoe racks in public places

09 Packaging

.

*TIPPING*
Put simply: don't. Apparently (I haven't seen this myself) it's really insulting. It's as if to say "You don't make enough money at your job, so I'm taking pity on you and leaving you my pocket change." Which I guess we pretty much do in the US. I guess the "honor" belief extends to even the public servants. What's always struck me as odd is that you don't do it to the lowest paid food servers, i.e, Taco Bell, but you do it in a Marie Callender's, where they probably make more..

Just a thought.

*MUSIC*
I'm really surprised with which music is popular here. I was totally shocked when one of the teenage girls decided to sing "Top of the World," a Carpenter's song from the 60's, and some of the girls sang along with her. I'd never heard of this song, but apparently it's popular with the youth.

Another one is the Grateful Dead. Some don't really like the music, just the dancing bears, but there are quite a few who are big fans of them. I guess quasi-popular American music here just skips a generation.

I wonder if the next generation are going to be listening to "Shake your love" by Debbie Gibson.

*ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH*
In conclusion, I'm not trying to say that the American way is better. I'm just confused as to why these things are the way they are. I'm trying my hardest not to let my ethnocentric feelings dominate my thoughts on Japanese culture, since it's neat to see the differences. These were some that I've noticed.

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