Japan Realisations.

My dad always says that whenever you go on a trip, do not just go on the trip. Instead you should always do some reflections and do some deep-thinking to see what you’ve learned from the trip. I realised that I really realised a lot of things about Japan, and I think sometimes you really have to be there to understand how that place is like. So in that aspect I think I learned a lot this time round, and perhaps I could write a thing or two about what I realized about Japan – though I’m not too sure if any of my Japanese readers would be too pleased with it, but hey, that’s what I saw for myself!

1. I was amazed by how preciously little English the Japanese speak.
I knew right from the start that the Japanese don’t speak that much English. But I was still fascinated by how little English that actually speak. It’s like, I’ve seen umpteen times foreigners asking questions in English only to get a response in Japanese. Even in the airport where you’d expect the staffs there to speak at least decent English, it turned out that it’s still hard to communicate if you don’t use Japanese. So my verdict is, if you want to go to Japan, please go learn Japanese first. I can almost assure you those Japanese travel phrasebooks aren’t excatly of much use because even though you could make yourself understood using those words, you won’t be able to understand what they would reply you with!

2. The Metro/JR system is not as difficult to understand as it seemed.
Before my trip, I always have some uncomfortable twitches whenever I look at the Tokyo Metro/JR system map. I figured that even natives might have difficulties trying to differetiate all the different lines. It’s like you have the JR, and then you have the Toei Subway System, then you have the Keio Subway System, then you have the Tokyo Metro System, and they are all cramped into a city which isn’t as big as we all think it is. But actually if you are really travelling in Tokyo, those metro lines suddenly don’t seem that difficult to understand at all – as long as you can make up what the system maps are trying to say and have a rough idea on where the place you are going to is, you should be just fine.

3. Road names? What road names?
Sometimes somebody may pass you an address for you to find a particular location, but as I figured out, sometimes an address is not entirely useful because if you are finding your way on your own, you won’t even know on which road you are actually travelling on because the road names signposts are virtually non-existent. Maybe they are actually hiding somewhere, but I definitely didn’t see that many of them lying around.

4. The Japanese are always courteous to a fault.
Virtually everyone I came across in Japane was very courteous. From the train station staff to shop owners and even strangers inside a department store. In situations where I didn’t even touch them in accident, they were already apologizing to me. It’s nice to be in a very courteous environment, and I think my mood is always better in environments like these.

5. The Japanese are so rule-abiding it’s scary.
It’s deemed not courteous to be speaking on the phone on the train, so nobody does that. It’s deemed not courteous to have the phone ringing on the train, so everybody has his or her phone on silent mode. And then everyone walks on the correct side in a train station (i.e. if everyone walks on the left then you won’t find anyone walking in the opposite direction). And then when the pedestrian crossing light is at red, nobody would cross the road even if there is no cars in sight. They just all seemed so law-abiding!

6. Recycle bins are everywhere but trash bins are hard to come by.
On so many occasions when I wanted to actually dispose off my rubbish, I simply couldn’t find a trash bin in sight. Instead, I know I would have no problem trying to find a recycle bin for my plastic bottles or aluminium cans – there’s one next to every vending machine. I wonder if all Japanese were to bring their rubbish home rather than dispose them off on the streets.

These are just some of my observations, and I’m sure I could come up with more if I think harder. But I don’t think I could right now because I’m just so exhausted – it’s really not fun to be going straight back to work after a holiday. It’s been 3 days and I still haven’t recovered at all!