Day 18

Hi there!

Right now, I am in the plane on my way home again, and we only have to fly for another 5 and a half more hours. I watched 2 movies and an episode of Stranger Things and then I got bored. And that’s why I am going to make another Special Edition!

Again, this Special Edition will be about why Japan is werid (and why I love it so much :))

#1 The People. I know I’ve already told you some things about Japanese people in my first Special Edtion, for example the fact that they are so polite and that they form lines litterally everywhere, but during my stay in Japan, I’ve learned a few more things about them. Like the fact that they are chronically tired. It doesn’t matter where you are or what time of the day it is, you ALWAYS see a sleeping person. And I’m not kidding on this one! They are everywhere! They are in the bus, in the train, in the metro, in the lobby of the hotel, in a train/metro station, in cars, n the hall of malls, on some bench in the street and even on the step of the gate of a temple! And everyone is alwas yawning and looking tired and for some reason I found that very weird. Luckily for you, I am kind of an expert on making pictures of people without anyone noticing, so in the gally you’ll find some sleeping people in odd places :)

#2 The Streets. Now I don’t mean the literal streets, but more the side walks, the Pedestrian crossings and the traffic lights. FIrst of all the side walks. The side walks in japan are extremely annoying! There are so many people walking on the side walk in big cities and in small villages or the edges of a big city, the sidewalks are very very narrow and you cannot walk next to another person. Besides that, there are no cycling paths in Japan, so every person on a bike will have to use the side walk as well, and I know what you’re thinking: “Oh that doesn’t really matter, there won’t be much cyclers in Japan anyway.” Well, you’re WRONG! The amount of people on bikes in Japan is very close to the amount of people on bikes in The Netherlands. And I hope you can all imagine the drama it would be if all the people in The Netherlands had to cycle on the side walks as well… yeah that’s not going to work out. BUT besides the drama of the crowded side walks and the cycles, to make it even worse, there are blind paths everywhere! And this is probably a good thing, if there were a lot of blind people, but to be honest I’ve only seen 2 blind people on the streets and guess what? THEY WERE NOT USING THE PATH ANYWAY! And for us, people that are able to see, those paths are nothing but a pain in the ass (well, pain in the feet to be more precise).

#2.2 The Streets. Enough about the side walks, there are also the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossings. These two are most of the time linked to each other, but I’ll first start with the pedestrian crossings. They are everywhere.  And when I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE! The maximum distance I’ve seen between them was not more than 500 metres. Literally, there are at least 4 of them at each intersection and at least 3 at each T-intersection and when there are no intersections, there are at least 2 of them in each street and to be honest it is awful. It would have been great if there were no traffic lights, but of course, Japan had to place 2 traffic lights AT EACH PEDESTRIAN CROSSING! I’m telling you, everytime you want to cross the streets, you have to wait for the light to become green and of course everytime when we arrive at a traffic light, it had just turned red, and it is so not nice to be waiting for nothing in the bright sunlight when it’s almost 40 degrees outside! BUT, surprise surprise, the traffic lights are pretty cool. First of all, they have this extra function that shows you how long you have to wait for it to turn green again, and how much time there is left before it turns red again, and that is very handy. Also each traffic light comes with a speaker, that makes sounds when the light turns green. BUT again, this is annoying as hell, because there were only 2 different tunes and when you are trying to sleep at night and your house is next to a traffic light (which is almost always), it is very very annoying.

#2.3: The Streets. The streets are somehow very clean. You can’t find any empty bottles, plastic bags, candy wraps or other garbage on the streets. And this should not be a werid thing, but in a way it is, because when you look at the Netherlands, there are garbage cans on the streets and there is still more garbage on the streets than in the bins. BUT in Japan, THEY DON’T HAVE PUBLIC GARBAGE CANS! So I don’t know where all the trash goes, I mean, do people ditch it in the sea, throw them on the roofs of buildings or do they eat it?! (no just kidding, they probably just take their trash home to throw it away in their own garbage can) BUT STILL. In malls however, you can’t find some garbage bins, and you don’t find just one, NO, you find at least 3, because somehow they take recycling very serious.

#3: The shops. This is actually a very nice weird thing about Japan. In almost every street is a small supermarket, that is open 24/7! Most of the time it’s the 7-Eleven, but also the Family Mart, the Daily Yakazama and the Lawson are very common. BUT THE THING IS, all of these supermarkets look exactly the same from the inside and they sell exactly the same stuff for the same prize and I think that’s kind of cool. And very very practical.

#4: BAGS. EVERYTHING in Japan is wrapped in plastic. And when you buy it, it will be wrapped in another plastic called a BAG. And, in contrast to The Netherlands, you don’t have to buy your plastic bags. In fact, you get so many of them that you just don’t know what to do with them anymore. But that is not really the point, the point is: every cashier has a bowl next to the bags in which there is some kind of stuff ( I really don’t know what it is, it looks like vaseline or something) and they dip one finger in it and it makes sure they can open the plastic bag more easily! And I am convinced that The Netherlands should be having these as well, because be honest, you also can’t open plasic bags without licking your fingers first :)

#5: Locks. A lot of doors have locks, no big deal, doors in The Netherlands also have locks, BUT THESE LOCKS work in the opposite way as in The Netherlands. So when you want to open a door, you have to turn towards the dooropening, and when you want to lock a door, you turn away from the dooropening. And this is just simply really annoying and it does not make any sense :)

Okay I don’t know how, but I can’t think of anything else that I find weird about Japan….