Sometimes, when you’re living far from home, the strangest things feel like major crises. For example, this week my parents informed me that the family cat (who is closing in on her second decade) was ill. For whatever reason, being so far away, that felt like a real blow. I think there is always some sadness that comes with a pet falling ill, but for whatever reason it’s exacerbated by feeling distinctly like that which is familiar at home is changing beyond your control while you’re abroad. Maybe that’s because even the familiar is unfamiliar in Japan - things like ATMs pose major language study crises, what you buy at the supermarket expecting to be hardboiled eggs turn out to be WATERY, RUNNY softboiled-like eggs, people drive on the wrong (I’m American, give me a break) side of the road, nobody EVER makes eye contact and forget physical contact, if you ask a question probably nobody will understand you and if they do you won’t get a straight answer, familiar foods have been Japan-ified with the addition of things like seaweed, mayonnaise, odd ingredients (the classic example being corn and squid on pizza), or simply by having had their essential flavors (particularly spicy foods, cheesy foods, or foods involving peanut or coconut) modified to suit the mild Japanese palate. I don’t even LIKE spicy food and I’ve been missing it since getting here, that’s how mild everything is.
When you’re planning a move to a foreign country, I think you assume that it’ll be different, but kind of think in the back of your mind, how different could it be, REALLY? And then you get here to Japan and realize that among other things that make you a weirdo here, you also eat a massively ethnic diet because there is no breakfast cereal (people eat rice, miso, natto - a particularly unfortunate culinary invention if I may say so, fish and so forth), no bread other than fluffy, processed white bread, no cold cuts to speak of, no deli cheese, etc and etc.
In particular Japan seems to have made a distinct effort to remain un-globalized, resisting the pull of American media and influences even with access to cable TV and the Internet. Despite these phenomena, Japan remains, amazingly enough, a remote, isolated, and insular nation having little contact with or concept of the world beyond its borders. Although Japan is a modern, first-world and developed nation in almost every way measurable on any kind of graph or index, it is, truthfully, no more open to the world in any significant sense than it was during the years of the Sakoku Edict. The Sakoku Edict famously expelled all foreigners from Japan and sealed the nation’s borders. In some ways it feels like such measures are still in place today - familiar and ubiquitous brands and social norms or memes are absent, all print and visual media is Japanese in origin and presentation, and Japan eschews most foreign celebrities (including Hollywood) in favor of its homegrown talent stars and movie or TV personalities.
Slowly, Japan is opening its doors to the outside world - gestures like waving or shaking hands are becoming more acceptable, though the traditional bow still prevails - but the reality is that coming to Japan with the intent to live and work here is a bit like stepping off a space shuttle onto Mars.
One example is the bizarre Japanese garbage collection system, which I have yet to untangle. This results in me smuggling my garbage out of my house to collection bins under cover of night, hoping to avoid being scolded by angry old Japanese people. For whatever reason, Japanese trash is very carefully sorted into different categories, each of which is only permissible to dispose of certain days of the month. I cannot read my all-Japanese trash collection instruction pamphlet, so I just guess. One day I made the error of attempting to deposit my trash in the light of day. As I was preparing to pedal away on my granny bike, an old man ran up and began digging through the trash bin, removed my bag and began yelling at me in Japanese. It was to say the least uncomfortable, and since I had seen him two nights earlier with a woman I assume to be his wife rifling through the garbage bin with flashlights inspecting the bags, I think he is the self-appointed local Trash Police. At any rate, I now dispose of my garbage after dark, very sneakily.
Another creepy old man episode happened as I left a Lawson Station (convenience store, or conbini in Japanese) after paying my electrical bill (yes, you can pay your bills 24/7 at any convenience store in the country). This old guy was going down the bike rack trying every bike in an effort to find an unlocked one he could rip off. Crazy old goat, mine was locked but he took the unlocked one parked next to it. Who says all Japanese people are polite? Henceforth I am skeptical of all elderly Japanese men, having thus far seen them demonstrate relatively poor manners.
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