I'd like to say that I managed to take something deep out of Japan, the people's sense of duty, and ritual, and sometimes whimsy, the mix of ancient and modern, the hint of warrior spirit and pride that quietly permeates the place, and maybe to some extent I have, but the strongest impression, as crass as it might be, has to do with how many people I saw doing so little. There's a beautiful sense of pride in doing even a humble task well, but... mostly it's this one image of a hardhat-wearing guy sticking out of a manhole flanked by two flagmen that sticks in my head. Yes, there were many bicyclists on that sidewalk, but still, this kind of usage of manpower (personpower?) seemed ubiquitous in a way, say, the oft-gratuitous traffic-guiding cop at road construction works in Massachusetts doesn't match. I can't help but wonder if that's cause or effect of Japan's lingering economic doldrums. (Hearing about the rampant misguided lending and speculation of their bubble in the 80s definitely reminded me of what I'd heard of our own the subprime mess.)

The package says it's giant, 435g -- but Josh says used to be 450...

Josh mentions some inflation (like prices for softdrinks, far more standardized than in the USA, going up, or other price hikes disguised by quantities per package going down) and that the Japanese government is thinking about hiking the salestax from 5% to 20%, which would be a shock on many levels.

(Heh, actually, having landed at O'Hare, this is a great example of not always knowing what's specific to Japan vs. what it's like to be a tourist; I think I mentioned that my first image of a somewhat gratuitous job was a guy wrangling bags as they came onto the baggage carousel; but O'Hare had a guy doing exactly the same task.)

Now to be fair, Japan uses many English loanwords and (Josh reports) just over the past decade or so has added tons of signage in English, along with listing place names in Romanji (phonetic Japanese, Latin letters.) But even beyond that, I was struck at how much language I could blithely ignore. Most notably the formulaic spiel reeled off by store clerks - which isn't surprising, it's just a ritual, though I kind of dug that there was a formula to follow - but just everywhere. I probably ignore more words in my life in the USA than I realize. Also, the USA has its share of multilingual signage, and Boston has lots of people to overhear talking in languages other than English, so maybe I'll flatter myself and think of my (relative) ease as being a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, or some such flowery gunk.

Also, people designing computer UIs have a rule of thumb: put whatever text you want on screen, people don't read anyway. In that sense, UI design has its own international flair, sharing people's indifference to text.

Well, not cellphone ringtones so much (though I like Josh's, with some gals singing this one classical number acapella), but you hear a lot of melodies, especially on the subway and rail systems. Some are whole little symphonic snippets, others are more blatantly electronic minitunes. And it's not just the trains either; one of my favorites was three-Fs convenience store's "person entering" tone, a variant on the typical "bing bong" - it was a 3 part "Bing bong, Bing bong, BING Bong" (err, the number of capital letters showing how high the note was) that really sticks with you. Cheerful: "Hello, Hello, HEL-Lo"

Josh is a high school teacher, and he mentions the challenges of coping with the Japanese "group mentality"; many of the cliches about being taught that "the highest nail gets hammered down" and the stress on group consensus have their basis in reality. He will ask a question of one student, and the student will consult with the small peer group to come up with the group's answer. ("What about intragroup disagreement? How is that resolved?" "Oldest male wins".) Similarly, a student asked a question but forced to separate from the group will often hem and haw and say they don't know, even if they do. (Two possibly cosmetic similarities between Japanese and Russians: maybe it's not the same but the latter also have no compunction about collaborating on individual assignments (to an extent that an American might call cheating) and people of both nations seem to love slippers around the house.)

This provides a challenge for Josh, who is tasked with preparing students for college abroad, usually in nations with a great stress on personal achievement. I admired the cleverness of one approach he takes: he divides his class into teams and his subject matter into sections. Each team then has a single member responsible for each section (so ideally if there are say 4 sections of material, each team has 4 members.) Each member is responsible for learning that section and teaching it to the other members of their team, and then every team is tested on all the sections... so each student has a personal responsibility, or else the whole team will suffer. I thought that this was a nifty it of organizational jujitsu, using the students concern for the group to strength their own personal responsibility.

Maybe it goes without saying, Josh and I had many terrific conversations as we ventured forth in Eastern Japan.

It seems like most chain stores (maybe not the convenience stores) had loyalty / reward cards. Sometimes these seemed laughable (get $5 once you spend $500!) but at the camera/electronic stores, it could really add up.

So, as an overnight option beyond the (in)famous capsule hotels and love hotels, there are the Internet Cafes. We ducked into one my first day there, just to see it. Each one is a private (albeit electronically monitored) room, roughly work cubicle sized, but otherwise like a closet, with a PC, a desk, and a comfy (reclining?) office chair. There are hourly and overnight rates, a big library of computer games and videos and manga, and unlimited use of the soft drink fountain. Kind of smoky, though, and gross to think about what has gone on in that little room, but I suppose all hotel situations suffer from that to some extent.

My first night there Josh reminded me of the earthquake basics (head for doorframes, try not to get hit by falling bookshelves) Earthquakes are an ever-present threat in Japan, probably more so than say, California. (I think Josh mentioned some author putting it as "Tokyo is a city waiting to die".) There haven't been too many medium-small quakes to relieve the pressure as of late, and a big one is kind of due. (There was a small one when I was there, but I wouldn't have felt in on the train.)

In Hiroshima, I got to thinking of the science fiction vision of "superweapons", and how the atomic bomb qualified for (and probably inspired) that idea-- the secret program producing the game-ending horrific ability. Like I mentioned, firebombing may have produced worse numbers, but being able to do that with a single bomb changed the game for everyone, probably for the rest of history.

Heh, I have no idea what I meant by this note. Maybe it was about an article I saw, about Japan's exploration of using companion bots to deal with their aging population?

These were things I saw reproductions of at the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Both were English documents with sections highlighted in red, and only those sections were translated into Japanese. I tried to get a feel for how "out of context" the excerpts were. Anyway, Einstein's famous letter warned about the possibility of atomic weapons and urged FDR to start research programs (though he, logically enough, wasn't sure if they would be portable enough to be dropped by a plane, or if they would have to be, say, snuck in by ship) and the other document was the mundane bureaucratic process of funding the programs and selecting the possible target sites. (I'm not sure what Hiroshima made of the USA's failure to attack it prior to the atomic bomb, despite the place having some military significance. (The Americans wanted a better evaluation of just what their weapon could do.) The people of Hiroshima certain knew they were on the list of eligible cities for bombing -- it must have been incredibly disheartening for the citizens to have been razing some of their own buildings in order to make firebreaks, but I guess that would have only helped for more conventional bombs.)

So even more than the language issue when reserving seats (since most Japan Rail clerks spoke a fair amount of English) is just not knowing what cities are likely to be major hubs or local destinations with trains running all the time... a few times I would ask detailed timing questions when the best answer was "don't worry about - the train is running every ten minutes".

A note to ask Josh about a nifty way of indicating numbers greater than five with both hands... to show "Track 8" rather than just raise both hands up in the air seperately, the JR employee placed 3 fingers against the open palm of the other hand that had all 5 fingers extended. Josh further explained there's a specific finger order they'll always use when counting, but I didn't quite catch it.

I mostly noticed this in the gateways and doors at shrines and temples... often the doorway had a piece of wood to step over, sometimes a big step. You kind of saw this in some of the houses in Japan to a lesser degree. I might have been paying too much attention to it, especially since some of those were for housing sliding doors, but it made me notice that for the most part, doorways in the USA are 3 sided, with the bottom at most being a separator between two types of flooring.

I guess I should mention the general scheme of houses, where there's always an area to take off your shoes, and then a distinct step up, often with slippers, which is where the house is considered to more properly begin. In casual households, at least, barefeet are not a problem, and tatami mats really feel nice on your feet!

ah, tatami!

Everyone knows about tatami, right? I liked the woven borders of the mats, which often line a Japanese floor, and how you're not supposed to line them up so four corners meet grid-wise, and how they're used as a good way of estimating the dimensions of a room.

So the tourguides use of "please", as in "please look to your left" (to regard an interesting building), struck me as odd. Not incorrect, completely fine grammar, but I never noticed that an American in the same role won't say please in quite that way, when it was for that person's own benefit. I guess we'd say "Now if you would", and maybe even throw in a please after that, but now that phrasing strikes me as a little contrived and complex. Josh pointed that Japanese, being above all a polite language, has a few different forms of request that all translate to "please" more or less, hence the confusion.

So, Josh was quite envious of my JR Pass that, for four or five hundred bucks, let me go wherever I wanted in the nation. Only tourists can get these, and it was a worthwhile investment, both in terms of sheer dollars, and in terms of providing a sense of freedom in planning trips. Except for some private subways here and there, I didn't have to learn the ticket systems much, I had the luxury of showing my pass and having the JR employee wave me through.



I think I mentioned, most non-subway trains have reserved seats and unreserved seats. If you had a general pass as I did, there was no cost difference, it was just an extra step to go through. Further confusing the scene were the "green cars" - sometimes even subway-ish trains had cars you could pay a bit more for to get airplane-style rather than bench seating.

Josh mentioned this old joke. I guess in some ways to it ties in to the increasingly common pairing of Japanese/Asian women and foreign men; stereotypically at least, Asian men don't have a great track record in how they treat women, so maybe it's not shocking that some of these women prefer the balance of other gender role models.

Like I mentioned, there's a great deal of patter that gets said at the register of every store, even (or especially?) the ubiquitous convenience store. It's kind of a respect and tradition thing, I'd say.

Most every store has a little tray for passing money to the clerk (often the tray top has little rubber bristles to make it easier to scoop money from) and sometimes for getting money back, but they're not super obsessive with their use, and money just gets handed over. Often money, credit cards, and just-purchased goods will be handed over by the clerk with both hands, which I think is a way of signifying "I am taking good care of this" (I first heard about that with the business card exchange ritual)

Finally, Japanese culture is very aware of the changing of the seasons. The convenience stores have various broiled-ish things at the front, and the selection changes four times a year. (There are other aspects of season awareness too, but some of it, like the fashion, was muted by a cold streak that happened just at the Spring changeover.)

I need to google this a bit, but Erin's new dolly had a green spot on its lower back. Josh says that Japanese babies tend to be born with this "mongolian spot", though his half-Japanese daughter Erin wasn't.

Erin also seems to have inherited Josh's eyes, since she has the "double eyelid" that I guess is a characteristic detail of European guys that I had never heard of. But apparently Asian women are very aware of that, many even consider surgery to get it added! So strange! Obviously I was aware of general eye-shape difference, but not this aspect. (I wonder what things an American might be cosmetically aware of that a Japanese person might not notice, or vice versa...)

OK, so this is question not just about Japan... but at some of the crater lakes around Mt. Fuji, they had some awfully big boats, bigger than what could have made it on the rivers there. Do you need a dry dock to build a boat on a lake like that? Or how do they do it? Do you not need a lot of permanent infrastructure, or is it there and I just don't notice it?

I meant to describe the Kabuki performance in more detail. But I'm feeling lazy. Men play women's roles, it's an old Japanese, the place I was at had very nice audio commentary in English you could rent a headset for, they have musicians in the background. The first number, "Onna Date" or some such, had a lot of great gymnastics, the second was a bit more drawn out, but kind of a nifty musical comedy that avoided the "Three's Company" ending I was expecting. Also Josh thought the somewhat foppish guy character in a purple kimono was supposed to be a woman, and was confused at the plot for a bit, but he didn't have the headphones.

Just a personal note... I had a great time talking with Alex. I know he had a kind of rough time at Tufts, being a commuter student, and maybe some culture shock only having been in the USA since middle school. But he mentioned that I seemed really "with it" to him somehow, because (and not despite, like I now think) wearing that weird fedora hat all the time. Also (and this struck me as odd because then we were just drinking buddies) seeing me with Mo in the cafeteria once, I just looked like I knew what I was doing. Maybe shmoozing my way to head of the computer labs there helped... anyway. How many people really feel they know what they're doing in life? Both Alex and I don't now, at least, single guys (but with girlfriends) in IT, approaching the outskirts of middle age and still wondering what it's all about.

Most of the museums I went to had a little reading room stocked with art magazines and what not. Is that common in the USA?

So there's essentially no tipping in Japan. If you really had to do something for some helpful person, you could get a small gift, but a small cash hand over would probably be insulting... people are just expected to do their job. I can't imagine how hard it is to make the reverse trip and learn how Americans tip. I mean, restaurants it's pretty straight forward, but there are some other situations where even Americans aren't clear what's expected.

Another thing I think a visitor to the USA might find dumb: sales tax that gets added at the register. Seriously, that's just strange. And then combined with our coin money, most which doesn't bother to identify itself numerically (and then our plethora of quarters, and nickel variations?) Sheesh! Only one coin, the five yen, wasn't labeled in arabic numerals, though extra points are deducted for the symbol that looks like a squared off "8".

Also I had trouble getting over the idea that no place in this store oriented culture minded even large 10,000 Yen bills (about 100USD). I always feel weird using anything above a twenty in the USA.

So there's a great food you can get at any convenience store in Japan, also at the Porter Square market, which is a triangle of rice, generally with some kind of sushi-ish topping, wrapped in (but separated from) a sheet of seaweed. The name is just "rice balls" but they're not JUST rice, and they're not ball-shaped. Anyway, moving on.

I was wondering why many of the stairways at trainstations were broken up with a small "up" section and lots of "down". Or the reverse. Well, duh... you expect people to come to the tracks a few at a time, but exit a train in big thundering herds. Duh.

Man, trains are just perfect for naps. Like a lot of Japan (in my opinion) often kept a bit too warm, and then the soothing rhythm of the tails... Even the subways are good, and you often have to watch for someone slumping onto your shoulder. Not helping are the cushy seats that are heated, even (or Josh says especially) as it starts to get warmer out.

There's a lot of casual bowing that goes on in Japan, but it seemed more pronounced on the railway cars, with the ticket taking conductor and drinks and snacks cart women always carefully bowing on entering, and then on exiting... Josh says he hadn't previously noticed but it's pretty pronounced.

It was great, trains were so punctual (helped in part by the way the platforms were marked with where the doors would open) that you had the option of setting an alarm and using that to know it's time to get off, rather than tracking each station name as you stopped at it.

I want to look up reports of this Tokyo stabber. Apparently he was a repeat offender, had told the cops what he was going to do, there were 8 plainclothes cops there, the first guy he stabbed was a cop, he stabbed a bunch of folks, one fatally, and he pretty much got away, turning himself in at a local police station. (heh, they're looking into a videogame connection)

So ever since Tom Robbin's "still life with woodpecker" I'm loyal to the inanimate objects that are my loyal traveling companions: my green hooded zip sweatshirt (starting to pil a bit), my tan courier bag (inner pocket, refuge for my passport an JR pass, busted its zipper on my penultimate day), Rockport shoes (starting to cut my heel just a tad), increasingly battered digital camera, my baby laptop that me let travelog everywhere, my iPhone (as a digital notebook), etc. They all did great service to me this trip, and as I continue to use 'em will remind me of the terrific time I had.

Random final image... while JR stations sometimes made you buy your own TP, the Narita airport toilets included washlets. These are the first detailed instructions I saw. I didn't dare try find out what "extra deodorizing" consisted of.