10 most shocking things about Japan

[keefwaddo]

Hi all

I've decided its time to start adding more Japanese stuff to my web site.

I'd like to make a list of things that surprise people when they live here. So when I say shocking it could really be something like: you can buy hamburgers but not hamburger buns! Humorous, absurd or genuinely shocking. Any thing is ok.

So if you have any ideas please post!

cheers
waddo
http://www.waddo.net/

[American Oyaji]

The lack of large size condoms.

Arcades in Japan are brightly lit and look like fun.

Arcades in the U.S. (if you can find one) were usually rather dark.

[Taro Toporific]

10. Concrete apartments
9. Concrete houses
8. Concrete home interiors
7. Concrete toilets
6. Concrete playgrounds
5. Concrete police boxes
4. Concrete temples, shrines, castles, buddhas
3. Concrete mountainsides
2. Concrete rivers
1. Concrete beaches

[adamukun]

10. Lack of effective public nuisance law enforcement (excessive and wasteful leaflet/tissue marketing, extreme rightist sound trucks etc)
9. Deplorable handicapped accessibility/fire safety standards.
8. Unbelievable crowding at times, very different sense of personal space from the US.
7. Casual pornography - consumed on trains, spied on the sides of pachinko parlors.
6. Public drinking (on trains etc) is tolerated and probably legal.
5. So few people speak passable English, making it really necessary to learn the language if you hope to get by living in the country.
4. On the same note, Westerners are rare enough in the country to warrant rude stares from every 20th person or so.
3. Notoriously bad hospitals.
2. Shocking number of people walking around with limps.
1. No central heating despite being one of the richest countries in the world.

Shocking!

[IkemenTommy]

1. Extremely hideously bad teeth and facial moles.
2. The unshaved pubic area for the dudes and gals. To the lesser extent, the unshaved obasan legs you see every once in a while on trains. Definitely not sexy.
3. The lack of public dust bins when you need them the most.
4. The definition of a good life is to slave for the same corporation all of your life so that you can save up for that dream tiny ass match box apartment stacked on one another 2 hours away from any civilization.
5. Those highly illegal and annoying loan shark commercials such as Takefuji, Puromisu, Acomu seen on TV, tissue leaflets, hanging advertisements on the trains, etc.
6. Holidays and vacations never feel like one because you'll always be stuck in traffic or get caught in the bad human congestion.
7. Girls find skinny dudes with long orange hair attractive.. and vice a versa.
8. Fuzoku, delivery health, nuki massage, etc are legal, but the harmless unedited unmosaicked porn is not.
9. Smanko Smap is considered as such a talent.
10. K-1 and Pride is becoming like WWE.

One more for extra... very crappy coverage of the NFL games.

[GomiGirl]

Noise pollution - the very loud and annoying music/announcements pumped out by shops and even advertising trucks driving downtown adding to the cacophony.. this should be regulated by city ordinances as in other countries.

[canman]

Driving to school this am, and this older guy out on the side of the road taking a pee. Not trying to hide what he was doing, didn't leave the door of his car open to block and public view, just standing there on the side of the road pissing. Now I know that for a lot of you, we up here in Aomori, might seem to be in the sticks, but for Christ's sake we are in the middle of the city and this guy is pissing on the side of the street, not road.
The exorbitant cost of driving in Japan. On top of the cost of gas and the car, but insurance, the shaken system, the annual car tax, the toll road tax.
Idiocy of parents in Japan, that allow their children to run around in parking lots without holding their hands, driving and not using car seats, or worse holding the child in their lap, or in a backpack type device, just ready to crush the poor kids.

[maninjapan]

In no particular order

1) The inability for the majority for the Japanese population to either walk in a straight line or at pace or both.

2) Whenever I want a train ticket there is always someone in front of my gawking at the train stations - come on you invented your language you should be able to know where you are going!

3) The train prices are cocked up - for example its cheaper for me to go to yokohama then go out and come back in and save about 200 yen on my ticket

4) Oishi so, oishi desu, oishikatta desu . You know what i mean

5) Obasan - christ they just f&*k me off

6) 6 slices of bread DOES NOT equal a loaf of bread.

7)The homogenous nature and how you can't be Japanese unless you are 100% japanese. Also whenever you speak a word of Japanese - "sugoi, nihongo wa jyozu desu". piss off. all I said was "ikura desu ka?"

Their organized bus tours.

9) Suicidal jumpers on any of the train lines into Kanagawa.

10) High pitched byebye's

10 things I love (just to balance it out)

1)The last train always nice and late

2) In winter, all women wear knee high boots - I LOVE THEM!

3) Its cheaper to buy a can of chuhi than it is to buy a can of coke.

4) How anything is mearely just a train ride away.

5) VAT is only 5%

6) The fruit - it may be expensive out of season but my god it's delicious.

7) The younger generation are much more open.

Green car - would sir like some extra space and quiteness for an extra two pound fifty? sure...

9) shops close at 10pm - so when you have finished work at 5om you still have time to get that 60" plasma screen your wife wanted you to get.

10) If I don't want to understand Japanese, I just switch off.

[GomiGirl]

I've seen guys pissing off the train platform onto the tracks - pity they aren't electrofied...

Public spitting is another one that I hate - but I have said that before...

[ichigo partygirl]

annoying/bad shocking things
1.there is never (the right) rubbish bin when you need one.
2.public urination
3.sniffing, sniffing, sniffing
4. noise pollution
5.Whitning face creams

Good/surprising things
1. drinking at the movies
2. vending machines whenever you are thirty
3. tabi-nomi hodai
4. nomi hodai karaoke
5. 100yen shops

[FG Lurker]

I don't have ten to list, but I do have two:

1) The total lack of apparent urban planning or zoning in many cities. Maybe it is just a lack of enforcement...? The resulting odd-ball mix of urban sprawl ranges from interesting to bizarre to ugly.

2) How so many gaijin have so many complaints about life in Japan yet they still stay. I'm not necessarily talking about other posters in this thread, just gaijin in general. Many people seem to hate so many different aspects of their life here yet they neither leave nor try to improve their situation.

[maninjapan]

That's why I put my positive list.

Whatever country you go to there are always gonna be bad points.

So far - been here 3 years and the good points greatly outweigh the negative. The trouble is people don't remember the good points - something crap happens and that's what people remember!

[Mulboyne]

...The trouble is people don't remember the good points - something crap happens and that's what people remember!

There is an assymetry in thinking -- damned if I can recall its name -- which is more common in some cultures than others. When someone does something apparently bad to you, like cutting in front in a queue, we tend to attribute bad motives to them. When we do the same thing by accident -- perhaps we didn't see there was someone else in the queue -- we expect our lack of bad intentions to be recognized and accepted.

The "success has many fathers while failure is an orphan" syndrome is also relevant. People tend to attribute success to their own talents (not always) while looking outside factors to blame when things go wrong.

[CrankyBastard]

I have nothing to contribute to this thread because nothing has shocked me in the thirty-odd years I have been here.

[adamukun]

I don't even live there but yet I complain. What is wrong with me...

[Jack]

I don't have ten to list, but I do have two:

1) The total lack of apparent urban planning or zoning in many cities. Maybe it is just a lack of enforcement...? The resulting odd-ball mix of urban sprawl ranges from interesting to bizarre to ugly.

2) How so many gaijin have so many complaints about life in Japan yet they still stay. I'm not necessarily talking about other posters in this thread, just gaijin in general. Many people seem to hate so many different aspects of their life here yet they neither leave nor try to improve their situation.

For the same reasons I find Japanese hate everything in Canada and yet they stay here even after having been raped by 3 guys in an alley. They ask their mother to send Japanese shampoo, stationary, snacks, food and whatever. But they still hang around in Canada and don't want to go back.

[Captain Japan]

3) The train prices are cocked up - for example its cheaper for me to go to yokohama then go out and come back in and save about 200 yen on my ticket.

I used to travel regularly from Yotsuya to Hachioji. After a few trips I realized it was cheaper (by over 100 yen) for me to get off at Shinjuku and buy another ticket. I was telling this to my boss at the office one day and he was puzzled since he had no idea what I was talking about. So he fired off an email to JR. The response indicated that once your travel exceeds a certain number of kilometers (I think it was somewhere around 40) a different rate system kicks in. I'm guessing that for your Yokohama trips you are also exceeding this distance.

[FG Lurker]

I don't even live there but yet I complain. What is wrong with me...

Likely too much to list.

[whos.your.daddy]

Most shocking thing in Japan.













































GomiGirls Knickers.

[Jack]

Everytime I buy something on a credit card they fucking ask me the number of installements I will make. I say ikkai like everyone else. Since when is this their fucking business?

The constant overhead announcement wherever you are. There is no fucking peace to be had in Japan anywhere. When I mentioned this to locals they were shocked because they had never noticed it. The godamn country is plain noisy.

Can't find a fucking quiet corner to kiss a girl. There are people everywhere.

No Diet Coke. It's as rare as 14 year old virgins in Japan.

[FG Lurker]

Everytime I buy something on a credit card they fucking ask me the number of installements I will make. I say ikkai like everyone else. Since when is this their fucking business?

Idiot.

No Diet Coke.

Blind idiot.

[Jack]

FG Lurker. Go fucking suck eggs, brainless moron.

[ichigo partygirl]

id have to agree with Jack about the diet coke thing. It is not avaliable in all vending machines and conbinis. Only some supermarkets sell the larger size bottles. It is not hard to find but it is not as readily avaliable as regular coke

[maninjapan]

Everytime I buy something on a credit card they fucking ask me the number of installements I will make. I say ikkai like everyone else. Since when is this their fucking business?

Well considering my credit card takes everything out on one go at the end of each month then I think this is a good idea. For example I bought a plane ticket back to the UK - 120,000 yen.

I could have paid in one lump sum but I thought - hang on, what happens if I need some cash.

nikai onegai!

I still have the money I need and can afford the plane ticket - but just in case of a rainy day - it's all sorted. Yes i may pay an extra 3000 yen on interest but hey it's ok.

[ichigo partygirl]

Well considering my credit card takes everything out on one go at the end of each month then I think this is a good idea. For example I bought a plane ticket back to the UK - 120,000 yen.

I could have paid in one lump sum but I thought - hang on, what happens if I need some cash.

nikai onegai!

I still have the money I need and can afford the plane ticket - but just in case of a rainy day - it's all sorted. Yes i may pay an extra 3000 yen on interest but hey it's ok.

Oh so thats what they meant when they were saying to me 'Ikkai yoroshi desuka'....... ..now i find this out. hehe red face....

[FG Lurker]

The split-pay system only works for Japanese Visa/MasterCard credit cards. I am not sure about JCB. It does not apply to AMEX or Diners, no matter where the card was issued.

You can split payments over two months for no charge on most (all?) cards. 3 or more months and you'll pay interest. I think the limit for splitting is something crazy like 48 or 60 months on most cards, but you'd have to be retarded (like Jack -- thanks again for the hilarious "fuck yourself" PM btw) to want to pay CC interest rates for 5 years.

[FG Lurker]

FG Lurker. Go fucking suck eggs, brainless moron.

OP ERROR: ID-ten-T

(And no, I don't expect you to get the joke Jack... In fact, that IS the joke.)

[IkemenTommy]

id have to agree with Jack about the diet coke thing. It is not avaliable in all vending machines and conbinis. Only some supermarkets sell the larger size bottles. It is not hard to find but it is not as readily avaliable as regular coke

I have to agree with Jack also. The only place I know that serves diet (please) is TGIFridays. None of the fast foods, not even McDonalds, which gets endorsement deals from Coca-Cola Corp., serves diet Coke. What a crock.

[FG Lurker]

Dunno, maybe it is a Kanto thing. Diet coke is not that hard to find here in Kansai. 99% of Conbinis have it. It is becoming more common in restaurants as well, including McDs.

Jack's a worthless POS. Diet Coke vs 14yo virgins... Guess he is the kind of guy who would know.

[GomiGirl]

The split-pay system only works for Japanese Visa/MasterCard credit cards. I am not sure about JCB. It does not apply to AMEX or Diners, no matter where the card was issued.

You can split payments over two months for no charge on most (all?) cards. 3 or more months and you'll pay interest. I think the limit for splitting is something crazy like 48 or 60 months on most cards, but you'd have to be retarded (like Jack -- thanks again for the hilarious "fuck yourself" PM btw) to want to pay CC interest rates for 5 years.

This is one of the great things about Japan... the stores hold the risk and only bill you over a few months. This is good because it is not possible to pay the amount on the credit card in installments like in the US or other countries..

There is no charge to the card holder for splitting payments. This is a great service IMHO.

So to Jack - they are not asking you how many payments you will make, they are asking how many times you would like to be billed.