It's the little things in life...

In my effort to bring tidbits of information from Japan that you won't find in a tourist pamphlet, I have been developing a list of the little things I've noticed in my daily living that are different from America. Here are a few to entertain, and possibly baffle:

Plastic is easier to recycle than paper. This is truly odd to a person who recycles more paper and cardboard than anything else. I used to stay away from plastic bags and Styrofoam, but here in Japan there are recycling categories specifically for these items. You just bag them out and leave them in the collection zone on the appropriate day. Want to recycle paper? I've been bringing them to work, since the alternative is to find a local neighborhood association that took on the task of collecting paper recyclables- the city won't do it by itself.

(My plastic recycling, artfully arranged for the viewing pleasure of any waste management connoisseurs)

No shoes indoors. Okay, most people in America know that the Japanese do not wear shoes inside their homes. But what are the implications of this? If I'm going to work and I've just laced up my shoes, and suddenly realize I've left my wallet in the main part of my apartment, do I take my shoes back off to go get it? In the end I figure if the tree falls in the forest and no one is around...just scamper into your house really quick with your shoes on. As a returning JET remarked to me, the shoes thing is more a ritual of respect than a worry about actually making things dirty.

 Milk. I have yet to find skim milk in Japan. So far “low-fat” milk tastes like 2%, but I'm gradually getting used to this. The other strange thing? All Japanese milk I've had so far has an aftertaste of sweet-corn. All I can figure is that they must feed their dairy cows corn to develop this flavor on purpose.

(The one in the middle is my favorite; only the finest from deformed cows!)

No dryers means lots of lint. You know how your lint trap is full of the stuff each time you do a load of towels? Now imagine if all of those loosened fibers stayed in your laundry because there are no dryers in the average household. I wouldn't have noticed this, but I wear contact lenses. I usually wash and dry my hands before putting them in, so for a while I was getting lint on my hands right before I pawed around in my eyes. Now I know to just shake my hands free of extra water, because there's nothing quite like a contact lens full of towel fibers to wake you up in the morning!

Japanese washing machines are mean. Laundry bags are a must, because otherwise you'll go through clothes faster than your paycheck can keep up. I brought a pair of light beige linen trousers to Japan with me and have washed them perhaps twice. Even in laundry bags my nice summer pants were worn so thin that now they are more or less transparent. Lest my students bask in the glory of my underwear choices (superman boxers never looked this good) I made a quick stop at the mall last night to pick up a new pair of khaki work pants.

No internet ads for videos! When I watch television online, be it through you tube or a network site, there are no commercials in or before the video starts. This is probably because American companies didn't want to pay for advertisements for populations who would never buy their products. Thus, with a Japanese IP address I can watch all the Daily Show I want without learning about the latest in mens' shaving tools (now with seven blades -and- a hot model to cling to you while you shave!)(no really, isn't that dangerous?).

Crinkly rice paper! I rinse my rice before I cook it in my rice cooker, but there's still enough loose starch to leave a thin film on the bowl after I scoop my dinner out. One day, instead of washing it immediately I let it sit to dry. Lo and behold the stuff dried into a crinkly layer of rice paper which is easily peeled off and thrown away. It makes cleaning up very easy, and is also pleasurable in the tactile sense. ^^

Mail delivery. Important mail will be delivered to you personally by a uniformed and helmeted post-man. (Most Japanese civil servants in the field wear construction-type helmets. I'm not sure why they do this. It gives me the impression someone isn't telling me something.) Anyway, if you aren't home during their delivery they will leave you a polite note asking you to call to rearrange a delivery time. I did this one day after work at about 6pm Japan time. The woman on the English Japan Post hotline asked if they could deliver it that evening. “Oh golly.” I said. Two hours later there was a post-man in my hallway, helmeted for protection against hallway debris and carrying my package. Unlike the post service in America, you can arrange to have parcels delivered as late as 9pm. I wonder if I'm allowed to hug the post-man.

Japanese food is really cheap, if you know where to look. Imagine for a moment that you could go into Walmart or Safeway and pick up an authentic Japanese lunch for under $4? Tempura, tako-yaki, or onigiri? It's all essentially deli food. Whereas in America we'd have to go to restaurant and pay around $12 for the same thing, if we were lucky. At school teachers can order take-out lunch boxes from the cafeteria for about 360 yen (about $3.60). The result is a large plastic tray of rice, vegetables, and meat delivered right to our office. If you like Japanese food, don't expect to lose any weight here!

Residential/commercial zoning doesn't really exist. If you want to find a particular kind of store in Japan, your best bet is to walk for a few blocks. In between apartment buildings and houses you'll find everything from grocery stores to antique shops. On my walk to work, which is probably three city blocks, I walk past two restaurants, a video-game rental, a bank, an apartment building, two second hand stores, a shoe shop, three houses, a cake shop, two dry cleaners, and a pharmacy. This is fairly typical here.

That's all from me today. Tomorrow I will doubtlessly write about the weather. It's been pretty crazy over here in terms of wind and rain. I'm snug in my apartment right now, but let's say that my walk home was an experiment in what a tropical storm will do to a $2 umbrella.

-Andrew