I feel like I’m really starting to get the hang of getting around Tokyo, which means that it’s probably time to move onto the next place :p Yesterday was a pretty busy day. We spent part of the afternoon hanging out with Kimberly’s former roomate from her Hong Kong study abroad program. She showed us around Harajuku which is near Shibuya. She has been here for almost a year but was born in Seoul and spent time in DC. She showed us around some of the shopping areas and we went to the Meiji Temple in the area. It was in a really cool thickly wooded area that blocked out the busy sounds of the city. Before you entered the temple area there was some kind of healing fountain where you can drink the water or wash your face? I don’t know too much about it besides watching what people were doing. In the temple area, you can toss coins with hopes that your prayers will come true. Considering the fact that I’m easily impressed by random things, the coolest part of the temple was seeing a giant dragonfly crash to the ground in front of me and see a wasp fly down on it and start stinging it repeatedly.

After the shrine we parted ways with Kimberly’s roommate and met up with two girls that went to the University of Minnesota. They took us to the BEST restaurant called Yakitori Marukin where we ordered really delicious meats and noodles.

After dinner they wanted to go to an arcade and do a photobooth. I didn’t know what I was in for but I guess photobooths in Japan automatically make your eyes big and adds eyeliner, blush, and lipstick on you. After you take pictures there’s a touchscreen with pens where you play around with the pictures adding text and weird girly things. I played a bunch of music related arcade games. They’re incredibly popular here, especially the drum game and the piano game. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I had fun messing around.

We’ve been in Tokyo a full 4 days and so far the Japanese phrases that have been most helpful are, hello, thank you, check please, excuse me. People are so incredibly polite here it’s like Canada times ten. I think Japan has been the most culturally different place that I’ve been to so far. I just had so many questions to ask Kimberly’s friends about the work environment, social cues, the dating scene, etc. I feel like there’s just a lot of things that I’ve observed that left me scratching my head and wondering why it is the way that it is.

Granted these are my observations from being here for less than a week, I’d love to hear other people’s experiences on the subject matter too.

  • Japan’s mainstream anime depiction of women is kind of depressing. They show girls with ridiculous figures and it feels like guys here are naive to believe in it?
  • All Japanese white collar workers wear white shirt and black/navy pants. They’re instructed not to “stand out” and we saw a giant line of people just trudging to work basically single file on Monday morning.
  • There are no bike paths in Tokyo, bikes go on the sidewalk and people don’t say anything or ring bells to let you know they’re coming up behind you.
  • People typically walk on the left side of the sidewalk but other times they’ll walk on the right, we haven’t figure out when to walk where yet so we keep getting in people’s way.
  • Japanese restaurants don’t really serve vegetables. Someone said that it’s expensive to grow so people have just done without them
  • People typically don’t cook at home for lunch and dinner, that’s why all the restaurants are full all the time.
  • Normal work day starts between 9-10am and you stay at work until your boss leaves and after that you’ll go out to dinner and drinks. We saw people walking home at 2am with their work clothes when we were going to the fish market.
  • When you throw trash away, it’s either burnable or recyclable. Not sure if anyone watches Silicon Valley but this scene comes to mind

We’re headed to Kyoto tomorrow and will be there for a few days.