After a few days of observation of the alien society of Japan, I’m bringing some more things that quite surprised me or caught me in a situation where I wasn’t sure what to do (you either follow the crowd or embarrass yourself).
1/ Wet napkins
Whenever you eat out in Japan (and people do that a lot, because the food’s amazing and very affordable), you get either a little wet towel or a packaged wet napkin, so that you can “wash” your hands. The first time this happened to me was actually on plane, but I thought it was specific to the airline. Turns out it’s everywhere in Japan.
2/ Bowing
Okay, everyone and their mother knows that Japanese people bow a lot. I’m not going to pretend that I had no idea. I also know about the different types of bowing depending on the situation and the person (not that I can do it correctly, I just know about it). What I hadn’t known is that people also bow when crossing the road, after a car lets them, as a thank you. In Europe we wave, in Japan they bow. The only thing that makes it uncomfortable to me, is the vision of a person hurrying to cross the road and a car stops, so they bow as they’re running ad they fall. Because I would be that person.
3/ School pools
So apparently, a vast majority of school (if not all) have a pool, as swimming is a part of their gym curriculum. Personally, I think it’s great to learn to swim from a young age. And how did I find out? Well, I got into a new hobby – not dying from heat in my room and saving the electricity, so I’ve been reading books on an outdoor staircase, from where you can see on of those pools in a nearby school.
4/ Senpai (senior) – kohai (junior) relationships
Again, I had known about this. Yet still, it came to me very unnatural during my recent visit in a secondary school. We attended a horticulture class where we made pickled aubergine with the students, which was actually great fun. But after we finished, my first instinct was to do the dishes, as I’m the oldest and I should be the example for the kids. However, in Japan, it’s the role of the younger or less experienced one to do the dirty work.
5/ Ways of paying
The Japanese society is a cash-based one and while I’ve seen some places where they accept cards (mostly big supermarkets), as a person without a Japanese credit card, I stick to cash. So I thought that it would be the same as in Europe, where you just hand the person your money and they give you the change, right? Well, yes, but actually no. There have been a few occasions like that, but the first time I paid, the cashier would scan the items, put them into a basket and send me to a close machine where you insert your money and it gives you change automatically. In a different shop, I saw the cashier put the money into it, so you don’t have to worry about giving the wrong change, which is very convenient. And I can’t not mention my today’s experience in a mall, where you’d use self-checkout, which we also know in Europe, yeah, I know, I love them, I don’t have to talk to anyone. But in Japan, you also don’t need to scan anything yourself, as it’s enough to put your basket into a designated spot and somehow, it’s scanned automatically. I was shooketh.
