Karaoke
Japan loves karaoke! Too be honest, I think it’s because they do it correctly. In the UK, karaoke is when you stand in front of an entire bar and sing to everyone in the room. So unless you’re an extrovert with something to prove, or, sound exactly like Michael Buble, you’re probably going to be a little apprehensive.
In Japan you are given a private sound proof room with your select group of friends (or on your own) where you can order drinks & food and sing to your heart’s content. It’s more like private dining in a restaurant than a very public spectacle in a bar. Two years ago you would have never caught me dead at karaoke, now you can’t tear me away.
Pachinko
There is a bit of a love hate thing going on in Japan at the moment surrounding Pachinko, especially recently. According to a study 1 in 4 are regulars at Pachinko parlors. It accounts for nearly a third of Japan’s entertainment and leisure market and makes more money per year than New Zealand’s total annual GDP.
Gambling in Japan is illegal, but utilising certain loopholes Pachinko parlors can get away with it. Pachinko works like this: you go to the kiosk at the back of the parlor, exchange money for little balls, use the balls in the pinball style machines, which, (hopefully) will pay out more balls. You then take those balls outside and (usually) around the back of the parlor to a dodgy alley and exchange the balls for money. And the cycle continues. It would appear however, that the industry is rapidly decreasing due to a lack of new players, and a disappearing older generation.
The appreciation for natural beauty
Of course appreciating natural beauty is not unique to Japan, however, Japanese people do have an unquestionable connection to the natural beauty of Japan. There have been countless books, movies, and music written about the subject, but I have also witnessed it myself.
I was walking to the shops for my weekly avocado squeezing sesh and coming the opposite way were a group of teenage boys doing what teenage boys do best, look like they are about to murder someone. They all had black hoodies on covering their school uniform. Some were on bikes, some were smoking, all were a public nuisance. However, as soon as they came across a particularly vibrant array of flowers blossoming out of a bush at the side of the road, they totally broke character. “Amazing!” They all said and jumped off their bikes and started taking pictures. It’s a running joke between me and Marianna Vlogs that Japanese people just can’t help but take pictures of beautiful scenery.
Traditions
I don’t know about you but as an Englishman, I can’t picture myself putting on a powdered wig, whitening my skin, rouging up my cheeks, and bouncing down fleet street with a cane in one hand and a busty “wagtail” in the other. However dressing in a Kimono, enjoying a tea ceremony on tatami mats, and making mochi by hand using 1000 year old tools is totally normal here.
I was on a day trip to hike to the top of a mountain where a very old Inari shrine is located (Inari is a kami that grants prosperity). I was feeling positive about the hike as I was making good time, and out of nowhere a Japanese businessman in full business attire shot passed me in a semi-sprint. It was totally odd because everyone was dressed for climbing a mountain in winter except this guy. By the time I got to the top, the businessman was rushing back down. “Must be going to a job interview” Marianna Vlogs says. It’s crazy (and impressive) to me that Japanese people still hold those traditions.
Onsen and Sento
Onsens and sento are all over Japan and they come in all shapes and sizes. They range from private small ones to huge public ones. From open space, scenic mountainscapes to built up indoor inner-city’s there are thousands of them.
Japan’s intensive volcanic activity has a huge positive, it creates the perfect hot spring water. A Japanese onsen is a natural hot spring that is used for bathing. Many traditional Japanese accommodations such as ryokans use this hot spring water in either private or public bathing facilities. Aside from pure relaxation, there are many benefits to using an onsen. Onsen water is revered for the medicinal and therapeutic properties and is believed to benefit everything from blood circulation to relief from skin conditions.
Although similar to the onsen in some aspects, a sento is a public, communal bathhouse. The difference between a sento and an onsen is that unlike the onsen, a sento does not use the hot spring water for its bathing facilities. Instead, the water comes from a man made source and therefore lacks some of the therapeutic benefits of the hot spring water. Both the sento and the onsen however, are highly popular and found all over Japan.
I have never been to an onsen because I have a tattoo. Most onsen owners / most Japanese people in general, have a problem with tattoos. It doesn’t really bother me however, because the idea of sitting in a hot public bath doesn’t really appeal to me anyway. I mean I could just have a bath at home without naked people I don’t know walking around. Yes, I get that there are all sorts of salts and minerals in the onsen water but I’m not really bothered.
Toilets
When I first arrived I thought I’d have to check in to a super 5 star hotel with electronic sliding curtains and smart mirrors that display the news before I saw my first smart toilet, but no! The airport, the train station, the restaurant, and my cheap share house all had one! Four smart toilets on my first day in Japan! Maybe I’m wrong, maybe England is the only place on planet earth without this smart technology built in to its toilet seats but Japan’s “smart toilets” are pretty much the standard here. You could go into almost any public restroom and you will be greeted by one of two situations. A squat toilet, or a smart toilet. I have googled the price of them in the UK and the cost of them is ridiculous! Here they are so cheap in comparison!
Apparently it’s down to the wiring. In the UK there is some sort of law that requires bathrooms to not have standard electrical plugs in them (maybe an electrician can comment and help me on this one). Instead you have to have stupid shaving plugs that no one has used in the last 30 years. So basically, having a smart toilet in the UK is illegal. If I ever have to live in the UK, I’m 100% breaking the law and having a standard socket put into my bathroom to get a smart toilet put in.
100s of flavours of KitKat
In the UK we have one flavor, regular. Sure we have KitKat Chunky, but that’s just a bigger version of KitKat. In Japan there are literally hundreds of flavors! They bring a new limited edition one out every month. I have actually just finished a bag of lemon shortcake KitKat (delicious, obviously) but I just can’t understand why we don’t get the same treatment! I’d love a lemon sugar, or a salted caramel, or a rum and raisin version of KitKat.
Come on Nestlé, have we not been good to you!? Isn’t our obesity level a testament to how much we spend on chocolate? There are no fat Japanese people! How much could they possibly be spending on chocolate!?
Trust
Japan is the most trusting place on earth. There have been so many occasions that I have witnessed a degree of trust that my English brain just can’t comprehend. There is a motorbike repair shop next to where I live that just leaves all their bike parts outside after they close. Seats, engine parts, wheels, exhausts, things that even I know have value to the right people. There are vegetable stalls in various parts of Japan (including Tokyo) where farmers leave their vegetables on an unmanned stall and come back at the end of the day to pick up their earnings.
In the UK, if it isn’t bolted to the floor it will get stolen. It’s why we don’t have drinks, food, or cigarette vending machines littering our streets. Even bolted to the floor ATM’s get stolen from time to time. In Liverpool a few years ago they implemented a sort of community push bike rental thing. Basically you put your card details into an app, it generates some sort of code, you unlock the bike for a price and then you put the bike back when you have finished. Can you guess what happened to most of the bikes?
I had bought myself a ridiculously expensive umbrella last year. It was massive, it was specifically a storm umbrella. It was incapable of turning inside out during windy conditions and it was made of this expensive feeling waterproof material. On my way to work one day I left it in the communal umbrella holder outside of my local 7/11 and totally forgot about it. The doors of the train closed on me and I thought, CRAP! I left my umbrella! But it was too late. I worked all day and at one point, confided in a colleague about how gutted I was that my ridiculous umbrella is lost forever and he said, “don’t worry, this is Japan, it will still be there when you get back.” It totally was! It was after 12 o’clock (midnight) by the time I got back to the 7/11 and it was the only umbrella left in the stand.
That would never happen in the UK! In the UK that umbrella would have been gone in two minutes. In fact, we don’t have umbrella stands outside our shops.
![InkedIMG_1722[30]_LI](https://johnmichaelmilton.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/inkedimg_172230_li.jpg)
Moving to Japan was a dream come true, once in a lifetime experience. Definitely, the best thing I could have ever done. However, Japan is not without its issues. So not wanting to end on a negative note I’ll start with the things I hate.
Imagine if you will, you’re standing in line at a checkout waiting for the person in front of you to finish fumbling about with their change and you cast your eyes downward to find that there is a pram. In that pram is a child about two to three years old, and they are staring at you. An undistracted, unwavering, relentless stare. “Heh, cute kid” you might think as you get back to putting your items on the conveyer belt. You glance back through the corner of your eye, she’s still watching. You turn your head to give her a proper look. No change, she’s still locked on. You make a face, poke your tongue out, flip her the bird, it doesn’t matter she’s still staring. I know the world around her is new and every new face is interesting. We know that she is not old enough to know that staring is rude so we find it funny or cute. We make jokes. “Oh got a new boyfriend have you?” “She’s such a flirt” haha very funny.
You know, in a country that has over eighty million bicycles (that’s 1.5 Bikes for every person in Japan), ranked no.8 in the world for most bikes in a country. You would think that Japan would be built for bikes, or that the necessary training standards for riding a bike would be very high. Not so. I used to hate bikers in the UK. They take up too much room on the road for absolutely no reason, they are slow, they jump lights, they pull out into the middle of the road without looking, they have clipped my wing mirror three or four times while I’m sat at a set of lights and apparently that’s my fault, and drive past them a bit too close and they become the angriest people on earth. I could go on but at least there is order, at least there is a highway code, at least its illegal to ride on the sidewalk. In Japan its a free for all. Cutting in and out of pedestrians riding on the sidewalk, riding in the road until they get to a red light then they just think “screw it” and ride anywhere, and they fly at you! It’s not like they take care when riding around pedestrians either. So many times I’ve had to stop dead in my tracks because a bike was coming at me fifteen to twenty miles an hour, and I’m stuck in the, “am I going left?” “Am I going right?” Oh god, I’m going to die in a head-on collision with a peddle bike situation. And this isn’t a youth issue. In fact, the worst offenders is a tie between elderly ladies in a “they see me rolling” one hand on the handlebars and one hand swinging to the side lent back position and women with baby carriers fitted to the front and back of the bike. There are outlines on the road to indicate pedestrians and bike areas but no one pays attention to it.
The things I love about Japan far outweigh the things I hate about Japan. Here are just a few things I love about Japan and I will just keep adding more to the list as time goes on.
Let me give you a sentence never spoken by a Japanese person. “Gee I could really go for a hot coffee, a packet of cigarets and a fully cooked hot meal, but oh well its 3:30am and all the shops are closed.” You can pretty much get anything you want whenever you want. There are drinks machines on almost every corner (hot and cold drinks). Cigarette machines in cities. Not to mention Seven Eleven and Family Marts are everywhere and open 24/7 and they will cook you hot food if you want. Definitely a city to have jetlag in.
The Japanese are the politest people on planet earth, sorry Canada. So many times have I asked for directions and the people in the store have taken me by the arm and lead me there. I have never been in a country that had people crossing the road to come and help me because I looked a little lost. The first time it happened I was thinking “get away from me” and fumbling around in my pockets to make sure my valuables were still there but, by the fifth time it happened, I realized they actually just want to help me and not rob me. The crime rate as well! It’s so low! If I was to walk down a street in the UK at 3:00am chances are I would be accosted by a gang of youths dressed head to toe in the finest fake Adidas money can buy, and probably not leave that alley in one piece. In Japan, at 3:00am you will just about catch the old ladies and the early birds getting a head start on their day. I live in an apparent “rough area”. When I tell people where I live there immediate reaction is “Omg!” “Are you ok?” “Why do you live there?” “That’s not a nice place!” But honestly, I can’t understand why. No attacks, no theft, no drugs, I can’t even find the slightest bit of graffiti. I sometimes wonder what a Japanese person would think of my home City of Liverpool, or Leeds, or London, or Newport!
Everything works! If Apple or Honda ever created a country it would be called Japan. Trains run like clockwork, people cross the road when the green man tells them too, there is no smoking in the streets, no eating if you’re walking, you stand on the left side of the escalator and walk on the right (this is reversed if you’re in Kansai). I have yet to have anything break down on me. Not seen a single pothole in the road. In fact, if there are roadworks there will be about nine or ten workers, they will finish the works in half a day and when they are finished they will clean the road and wash the cars that are on the road. There are potholes in the UK that are older than I am! Now with dicks drawn on them! Two people will work on the road maximum! It will take them a week to finish, and when they are finished they will leave half of their stuff! Including the cones, yellow tape, and plastic bollards.
Lets Visit Tokyo 