14th April 2019 - Aina Matamoros

So I just got back from Japan. WHAT A COUNTRY. Everything is so different and it is just WOW. I am very Asian lately since I went to China last summer and now Japan. I really like the continent and I want to keep discovering it (I am already thinking about the next country on my list…).

 

I went to Japan for a wedding, actually. Almost 6 years ago, I was doing a semester abroad in College in Portland, Oregon, USA. There, I met Yumi, a Japanese girl who was studying English and that, surprisingly for me, became my best friend. I was hoping to get an American friend but instead I got a Japanese one! I found it so cool but I would have never thought it would happen since Japanese people are very reserved and different. But she was just amazing.

 

After all these years, I was not able to visit her in Japan, but we have kept in touch luckily. And last November, she wrote me a message inviting me to her wedding! I felt so honored and I just knew it was the perfect chance to finally go to Japan and also see her again!

 

I went to Osaka (where she is from and where the wedding was) and also visited Kyoto and, of course, Tokyo (which is a whole other world). 

 

We all think Japan and Japanese people are weird and they actually are. But they are in our eyes. Their culture and way of doing things is so different that you get amazed all the time. 

 

If you are thinking about going to Japan, let me tell you some fun facts and interesting things you better know before you actually go there.

 

1. You have to take off your shoes in EVERY restaurant you go to (so you better always wear nice socks!). If you go to a restaurant where it is not required to do so, it is not an authentic Japanese place.

2. The very old and the very new life together. It is weird because they are so modern and advance in technology and other functional aspects of life and yet so behind and old-styled in the way they dress, they eat or in other aspects of everyday life. For example, there are a lot of places where you cannot pay by card or that do not speak any English.

3. Japanese people drive by the left side of the road (like in the UK or Australia). I did not know it before I went there and I was really surprised. And the cars are squared, like if they were a cube, in order to better use the little space they have.

4. It is allowed to smoke in places like restaurants and bars, and there are special smoking rooms in train stations, hotels or trains. I found it very rare in a society that is very polite and clean…

5. The toilets are like everyone imagines: they are smart toilets, the seat is warm, you can get cleaned by water and they even have a button to put on some music so people cannot hear what you are doing in there. 

6. In Tokyo, businesses, especially bars and restaurants, are located on the upper floors of buildings, not on the ground floor, because they do not have enough space to be all on the street level. They are too many people and need too many places to go. 

7. PHOTOBOOTHMANIA – this is nuts. There are some places with big photo booth machines were people (especially girls) go to take pictures. But these pictures are already edited and filtered in the way that they look like manga characters! (The funny thing was that it is adapted to the Asian face shape so I looked VERY WEIRD AND CREEPY). They dress up to go there and get the best picture. Then you can edit them adding some text and cool stickers. They are all about the appearance (also, girls wear colored eye contacts, fake eyelashes, take selfies with an app called You Like…)

8. Animal Cafes: there are “cafés” where you can go and touch and pet some animals. The most famous one (and the one I went to) is the Cat Café, but there are also Hedgehog, Dog, Owl, and Guinea Pig cafés. It may sound cool and adorable but it is actually a little sad because the animals are enclosed there and the cats, for example, were all asleep… so it is kind of bad for them.

9. At restaurants, waiters shout at each other to talk and costumers shout to the waiters when they are ready to order or to pay. It felt a little bit violent. 

10. Hanami: I got to be in Japan during the cherry blossom season and it was really beautiful… The tradition is that people go have picnics under the cherry trees, which is called Hanami. 

11. They are so polite it feels crazy sometimes. They are always saying thank you, they have the ways to go up and down or in and out of the train marked, they are so clean, and they do not invade your personal space.

12. Nightlife: Japanese men always go out for a drink (or two) after work, especially on Fridays, when many other people also go out. I was told how everything goes… You can hire men or women to go out drink and talk with you, men go to bars were there are very young girls (18-22-year-olds) that are there (working) to talk to them, some bars show how many men and women are inside so you can know if it is worth entering or not, there are some special places in the going out areas where girls go to wait and be noticed by boys… So it is a very particular way to create relationships. 

13. So there is this huge and crazy store called Don Quijote (yes, very weird name) where they sell EVERYTHING: from food to electronics, passing through cosmetics, souvenirs, costumes, clothes, toys, sanitary stuff and just anything you can imagine. 

14. And, of course, I have to talk about SUSHI. They eat the most delicious and simplest sushi: nigiri with less rice and more fish, the freshest fish I have ever tried. Salmon, tuna, squid (amazing), octopus, yellowtail and many other kinds of fish that I did not know but they were all awesomely delicious. ​​