Only in Japan

2010.05.25 / Japan / posted by idrawgood

Japan's as quirky as a Seinfeld character, and after several months in this land of contrast, I've come to a few realizations...some of which, if you're lucky, may someday develop into full-blown blog posts.

Only in Japan...

...could a castle be this cute.

Meet Shiromaru Hime, the round white castle princess, pictured here surrounded by dancing rat children. Like Himeji Castle's mascot, everything here is excessively adorable, almost enough to make you puke in your mouth. Everything, from sightseeing attractions to high-speed trains, has a "character."




...would a lady carry a giant bag of trash onto a train.

Japan's got one of the most baffling waste management systems in the galaxy. And what's more: you'll be hard-pressed to find an adequate number of trash cans in public, which results in people having to carry trash in their pockets, purses, and murses until they find a bin appropriate for a specific type of rubbish. Check out the trash chart below and see if you can make sense of it.






...would I have to perform my own dental work.

Seven visits to the dentist and three hospital trips later, and my tooth problem isn't much closer to being fixed. Thanks to a frighteningly crippled medical system in which bureaucracy often crushes the quality of care, I was forced to sterilize my X-acto knife and slice away. I'm pretty sure I'm certified to operate on animals now.






...could you marvel over a group of construction workers scrubbing dirt out of the cracks of a city street.

Yes, I saw this on a bikeride home. Most claim that Japan lacks a coherent national religious identity, but I beg to differ: it's cleaning. Cleaning itself often seems to take precedent over Shinto spirituality, in which it's an important ritual practice. Whether it's cleansing your mouth and hands before praying at a shrine or obsessively scrubbing a street corner, cleaning creeps into nearly every aspect of Japanese life.


...could you see an army of traffic Nazis spread across every small street corner.

Every time I see this white-gloved dream team, I have the same thought: 'Who's paying these guys?' It seems that they fall into two categories: the over directors, and the day dreamers. Over directors tend to fuel confusion by mirco-managing every bicyclist, car, pedestrian and dog that passes, while day dreamers are as useless as pigeon wings on an buffalo. Either way, you could have up to five old men simultaneously telling you where to go.

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