This is a revised version of my earlier blog about Japan, but here I am planning to add a lot of pictures. Some pics have been added, I will add more later.
Impressions of Japan –Tokyo, June 2018
You don’t understand Japan and the Japanese until you actually visit Japan and observe the behavior of your Japanese friends (both in Japan and abroad) over a period of time. Now I have done both. This does not make me an expert on Japan. Yet the conclusions I will draw by myself are not in any book or film or video. These are unwritten and unpublished truths about the Japanese society. So here they come (without much evidence!) – I invoke my freedom of expression rights, so you absolutely have the right to vehemently disagree with me.
The Japanese have many rules and customs and etiquette – some formal, some informal, some strictly enforced, some expected of good citizens. They are crazy crazy polite. If you go to a store to buy a loaf of bread, somebody will bow to you at the door, and will say ‘connichewa” (hello). You will have to do the same. When you come near the shelf where they keep the bread, another employee will notice you, bow and say hello and possibly enquire about your shopping needs. You will need to bow and speak with him and smile. When you are going to the cash counter, another employee will thank you for your patronage and ask you some additional questions. You will need to bow and smile and talk to him or her.
Finally at the cash counter, more bowing, exchanging pleasantries and a round of “arigato” (thank you). At the exit door, another bow and more pleasantries exchanged. In India, some stores may have a lot of employees on their sales staff, but you can ignore them. In japan, you have to speak to everyone, and BOW until your waist hurts. Almost all of us foreigners can not possibly follow these customs and many others that are followed by the Japanese every day!. We are excused by the Japanese for failing their standards but at the same time, under all the politeness, they feel smug at our lack of sophistication. As a result, the Japanese think we foreigners are rude and impolite in general
The Japanese do not care much about diversity. They like their society as it is, almost entirely consisting of ethnic Japanese. There is now a sprinkling of working foreigners and students. Of late, the resident hafus (mixed race) have grown up. If they are successful, they are celebrated (like Naomi Osaka). If not , they are tolerated and suffer quiet but persistent discrimination throughout their lives.
The Japanese do not care about economic growth that much – in fact stagnation is OK with them. They already have a high standard of living and they want to stagnate around that forever.
No drugs, no crime, decent food , excellent transportation and entertainment options, and decent salary and job security even for the lowest level jobs – the Japanese have quite a high standard of living indeed. Apartments, like hotel rooms, are tiny but clean and efficient – and outside Tokyo, they are not that tiny!
The Western media cares more about Japanese stagnation than the Japanese citizens.
Nor are the Japanese worried about declining birthrates, or decline in the number of married people. The Western media write alarmist articles frequently about the decline in Japanese family life, and the depression and the high suicide rate. Any evening of the week, there are huge crowds on the streets, shopping, eating and having fun – not consistent with a depressed society.
Every night, buildings and streets are crowded like this.
Every night, buildings are lit up like this and filled with hordes of people. A depressed, suicidal society? Not for most people!!
A typical night in the middle of the week in Shinjuku, the central business district. These are just regular bars and restaurants on both sides, nothing special like live music, concerts or wild parties. This is just normal for Tokyo.
Mostly, the Japanese do not wish to travel to uncivilized countries in Asia (includes India, Malaysia etc.) or Africa or Latin America. USA and Western Europe are OK . I have kept in touch with many Japanese friends since our university days about forty years ago. Everyone has travelled to many western countries during these years, but not a single person has visited India. The thought of visiting India with its lack of discipline and order, along with the dirt and poverty terrorizes the Japanese people (at least discourages them). You will see busloads of Japanese tourists all over Europe and USA , not at all in India or other South Asian countries. The Japanese travelers to India will be heretics and outliers.
The Japanese love Japan. Even with foreign degrees, good jobs in USA or Europe, they will ultimately return to the land of the rising Sun unlike us Indians or Chinese or others.
In our Ph. D. program in University of Rochester, among our contemporaries in economics, there were five Japanese, four Indians, one Taiwanese, one Israeli, one Mexican, and about seven Americans. All of these students worked in USA all their lives after finishing their Ph.D’s . Except, the Mexican guy was from an aristocratic Mexican family, so he went back after a while and eventually became Mexico’s finance minister. The Israeli man went back to the most prestigious university in Israel, and all the Japanese guys went back to Japan, gladly giving up economic opportunities in USA. We Indians gladly gave up our country for economic opportunities in the USA.
Many US universities have a small number of Japanese born faculty – they are there because of their academic or personal interests . They also often go back to Japan after about ten or fifteen years in USA. Compare this to Indians in our generation – none of us went back to work in India, ever. The only Indians with PHD.’s in economics that went back were the ones who did not get a single job offer in USA. Ashim Dasgupta was no exception- his Ph.D. thesis from MIT was below par and he never got a job offer.
The Japanese like to claim that they work very hard, in fact they quote long working hours and high burnout rates etc., to prove this. While some people of course work very hard and /or burn out (in every country), a little more probing will reveal the following:
A lot of work is “pretend” make-up work. In order to submit a report to a high level employee of the same company in a different office, email or fax is supposedly insulting. Somebody has to go clear across town to deliver the report, chat with the employee and maybe have coffee. Five hours of “hard work” that could be accomplished in one minute!!
In a university, a lot of professors bring sleeping bags and sleep in their offices because they are doing so much research! You can draw your own conclusions (hint: they sleep at night in their offices!)
Every evening, in the central business and entertainment district ( Shinjuku, where I stayed for four nights) , there are literally hundreds of bars and restaurants and they are all packed from early evening. Who are these people? Tourists? Teenagers? Singles hunting for partners? Yes, some of them are but these still do not explain the huge crowds every single night. We are looking at an area about twenty times the size of Park Street in Calcutta, or Times Square in New York City, with bars and restaurants at almost every building! And there are similar areas in Central Tokyo and many other places. The crowd consists of people working! They are conducting important business meetings! Yes, drinking, eating , smoking, chatting and maybe talking business a little bit. All on company time. I won’t mind working hard like that! After all that hard work, they are too tired (drunk) to go home, so they crash at a cheap hotel, and go back to the office in disarray the next morning and proudly claim that they worked so hard the previous day.
Because the way they are brought up, the Japanese are socially awkward . In the famous cat café, I saw Japanese men quietly sitting next to cats, not interacting with them, after paying a hefty admission fee to go in and play with cats!! In the subway or train , restaurant, or even in a park, many people are working on their phones or laptops instead of talking. This accentuates the hard work syndrome!
All tourist spots, temples, shrines, parks, iconic buildings, are all packed with Japanese people every day in addition to foreign tourists. Tourists from outside Tokyo ? Well , they are supposed to be working hard too!! My guess is that the Japanese get a lot of days off from their arduous work schedule, they just don’t want to admit that they do!
Overall. I have felt that the Japanese think that they are superior to others in the world. The people from Asia and Africa are deemed to be uncivilized and without manners – more so than people from Europe!
Obviously, not everyone in Japan holds these opinions, there are many exceptions !
Now I write about the good stuff! Japan’s society is so outstanding in many ways that I would happily vacation there every year even if all the above stereotypes are true for every single Japanese person (and they are not, obviously!)
Transport
The transportation hubs in Tokyo are massive! They were overwhelming to me when I landed in Tokyo, but once you figure out everything, it is really impressive and well-organized. Shinjuku station has five floors , one for subway trains, one for long-distance trains, one for long-distance buses , one for local buses, and one level for taxis and private cars. You can plan your nation-wide travel itinerary from that one place! And the entire building is full of restaurants and takeaway places and it is next to huge shopping areas. I had a hotel near the station. I took a train from Narita international airport to here on arrival in Japan, then used the same Shinjuku station for subway rides inside Tokyo and left by long-distance bus from the same Shinjuku station for Mt. Fuji. Subway trains are numerous and color-coded and well-organized, yet I managed to get lost on the first day and had to rebuy my tickets, so thereafter I bought an all-day ticket every day in Tokyo, and Kyoto and Osaka.
The cleanliness of the streets is striking! They do not allow smoking on the streets because the ash from your cigarette will make the streets dirty ( not the butts which you can dispose of separately) . Surprisingly, you can smoke in many bars and restaurants because the Japanese respect your private space, although this is changing fast!! But heck, I have no idea how they keep the streets and the sidewalk spotlessly clean even in high traffic areas.
Manners
The discipline and the politeness of the people working everywhere is amazing! They actually learn politeness and cleanliness at schools. In primary schools, students have one class period allocated to cleaning their own class rooms and toilets (yes, try this in India!!)
People everywhere think they are well –paid. Thus you do not tip the wait staff in restaurants or the taxi-drivers in Japan because they are insulted if you do so (no kidding)!
The politeness of people on the street and in social situations is totally off the charts! I think in Tokyo, you can take off all your clothes and step into a busy street while playing with your private parts and you will be summarily ignored until the Police politely asks you if you need help (alright, I made this one up, this is not true!!)
You will see bicyclists riding for about 20 meters on the sidewalk, stopping because they would not use the bell to distract the pedestrians in front and dismounting and walking behind them until they can ride again maybe this time for 15 meters!!
Everywhere in a humongous city like Tokyo, you see young boys and girls (8 to 13) taking the subway to school alone , hanging out in groups or playing in parks unsupervised. Older kids, 14 to 18, work in convenience stores or takeaway places, sometimes unsupervised by adults. Nobody kidnaps them, nobody assaults them , nobody robs them (try this in USA!!)
And, no, in case you have turned on your filthy imagination, teenage girls are normally dressed, or sometimes weirdly dressed with multi-colored hair and funky accessories, but not wearing micro-mini skirts and trying to seduce older men for money. If this does go on in Japan, it is an online, secret thing using only Japanese language, and I did not see any evidence of that at all in public places – I was not looking for it anyways!! The Western media often writes about teenage girls behaving inappropriately in Japan – it is simply not true!
The punctuality of Japanese transportation that you may have heard of is all true. A train leaving at 2:13 pm will not leave at 2:14 pm. Even my long –distance bus to Fujiyama from Tokyo went through highways and little towns and arrived on the dot after four hours.
Food
Japanese food turned out to be surprisingly tasty! They use a small amount of spices, but skillfully enough so that the food becomes flavorful. This applies to all the beef and fish soups and entrees I have eaten in Japan. And all the pickled and cooked veggies. Of course I liked the sushi and the tempura too.
Breakfast Sushi, anyone? Fresh, raw fish for breakfast tastes surprisingly good!
What is even more remarkable is that the quality of food is the same everywhere. You can buy a chicken sandwich, or a lunch combo with soup and a piece of fish and pickled veggies from a roadside convenience store or from an expensive restaurant, they will taste the same. The restaurants only offer much more variety and ambiance at much higher prices. As soon as I discovered this I started having excellent meals in my hotel room that I bought from roadside convenience stores. A meal of four small sandwiches (egg salad, tuna, roast beef, and Japan’s unique strawberry and cream sandwich) and a small salad and a small pastry will be about 8 dollars and everything will be super fresh and taste great! A meal like that in a proper restaurant will cost at least twice as much.
Talk about ambiance in fancy restaurants, the menu shown above includes Wagyu beef, the most expensive beef in the world, at just 11000 yen per serving (that’s about $110, or 8400 rupees !!) I did not eat this, could not force myself to spend so much on one meal. Instead I ate Bulgogi
Korean Bulgogi (beef) – cost about 10 dollars – very tasty!
The Japanese are very innovative about service in restaurants – some of these are now being implemented in other countries.
You may have seen or visited the rotating wheel restaurants where freshly prepared food items are loaded on to the conveyor belt. You grab whatever you like. This lets you taste many small items.
Another way is online menus at the tables, your order reaches the kitchen online and delivered to you by the waiter. I have seen this in USA during recent years. Still another way is to look at the menu items at the entrance, order and pay at the machine at the gate and get a receipt. When you are inside, your receipt gets you the food you ordered already.
Then there are specialized places in entertainment districts. Apart from the ubiquitous Karaoke bar, there are Robot cafes, Anime cafes, Maid cafes, and so on. And finally cat and dog cafes where you can hang out with your favorite animals and have a latte at the same time. I tried the cat café, and loved it,
You can not finish a discussion of Japanese food without discussing their vending machines. Yes, they have scores of beverages and snacks instead of only a handful in USA or Europe. You can also get prepackaged food and freshly cooked food in some machines that are supposedly very good. And machines are everywhere including at the street corners.
I did not try the food, but I tried all kinds of weird drinks and liked some of them( my favorite : Pokari Sweat Water – yes sweat water!!)
No drugs, no crime, decent food , excellent transportation and entertainment options, and decent salary and job security even for low level jobs – the Japanese have quite a high standard of living indeed . Apartments, like hotel rooms, are tiny but clean and efficient – and outside Tokyo, they are not that tiny! Healthcare coverage is a lot less comprehensive for working adults in recent years. On the other hand, for many seniors, health care coverage has been so excellent that many people of 100+ years continue to roam the streets, which results in some obvious social problems of depression, abandonment and loneliness.
Seniors
Talking about senior citizens, I thought I was in decent physical shape for a man in my mid-sixties. The Japanese senior brigade put me into deep shame. I have never seen so many old folks with flat stomachs and ramrod straight posture, hiking, biking, exercising and playing sports (and apparently, having sex too) in their sixties, seventies and eighties! Some of them work in their mid-eighties, not for money, but to spend time!!
I enclose two pics of my classmates in Rochester that I met after 38 years. the man with his daughter is Dr. Fukiharu, the guy with white hair is Dr. Kodaira, and the other guy is Dr. Takahashi
OUTSTANDING Parks right in the middle of big cities:
Huge parks and gardens with amazing landscaping that generate a sense of peace and tranquility. Almost every temple has a garden or a park adjacent to it that I found sometimes more appealing than the temple itself.
Serenity right in the heart of Tokyo