7/20/2023

Hello Blog Readers,

Well, the trip is over. I’m back in the States, fighting jet lag and already missing Japan. As you can see in the photo above, I DID get to see Mt. Fuji – briefly while taking off from Tokyo Haneda Airport (a crazy convenient and efficient airport by the way, considering its size and the number of people that it serves). With the trip now over, it’s time for me to debrief and discuss all of those random thoughts, opinions, anecdotes, and philosophical breakthroughs that happened for me during our brief time in Japan.

* Toilets – Unsure where exactly to start, let’s talk toilets! The toilets in Japan are amazing. From heated seats, to self-cleaning mechanisms, to automatic seat raising, to a variety of flushing options, and of course – the wonderful and amazing bidet – the toilets in Japan are the future and they 100% do things right. Even in public, they tend to be sparkling clean and, now that I’m back in America, I’m already feeling like a peasant having to use my cold-seated, porcelain throne that does nothing to clean itself or my bum. Come on America, get with the program and start upgrading your toilet game!

*Vending Machines – While on the topic of automation in Japan, the vending machines there are awesome! They are employed everywhere, from on the streets, to ramen and sushi restaurants; they stock a variety of things, from your general beverages, to alcohol, to food and other amenities; and they make things so convenient, especially for tourists. Feeling dehydrated? Don’t worry, you should be able to find a vending machine within a block or two. Worried about ordering at a restaurant because you don’t speak Japanese? Don’t worry, you won’t need to speak with anyone. Just find a vending-style ramen or sushi restaurant and hit the buttons on the food that you want in order to get your meal tickets. It’s great! Once again, America, get with the program. There are things that we can do to make life more convenient and livable for English and non-English speakers alike.

*Glasses – You may have noticed that in all photos of me during this trip, I’m wearing glasses. This is because my contact lenses were in the bag that got lost when I was trying to get from Chicago to San Francisco for my early morning flight to Osaka. This isn’t necessarily the biggest deal, except that generally I only wear glasses these days maybe one to three days a week. This is because my vision has changed quite a bit over this past decade, and while I kept up with the changes by updating my contact lens prescription, I (stupidly) haven’t updated my glasses prescription in quite some time. As a result, when I wear glasses the vision is a bit off. It doesn’t matter that much when only wearing glasses a few days a week around the office, but wearing daily for a week straight while wandering all over definitely took its toll on me. While I didn’t discuss it in the blogs, the mix of the heat and the daily blurry vision was giving me a lot of dizziness and nausea during our journey across Japan. I guess the takeaway here is to make sure to keep your glasses prescription up to date, even if you rarely wear them, because you never know when you might be needing them for the long term.

*Beard – Another issue that resulted from losing my luggage was that I couldn’t keep my beard trimmed and maintained during my trip (I had no interest in shaving, and did not want to spend money on a grooming kit that I’d only need for one week). This was a bit of an issue, because in Japan (and for Japanese women especially) shaggy beards are frowned upon. A bit of facial hair that is groomed and well-maintained is fine, but unkept or longer beards are viewed as sloppy and dirty – not exactly character traits I want associated with me. Now, no one ever said anything to me about it, but I definitely noticed towards the final days of the trip (in Hakone and Tokyo when my beard was shaggy) that women were looking at me out of the side of their eye quite a bit, and not in a good way. It was kind of a judging, “ew look at that guy” kind of look. Now that I’m back home, my beard is trimmed once again and I’m looking much better, so I’m sorry Japanese women for the way that I looked while I was in Japan! I promise that in general, I am neither sloppy, nor dirty.

*Water Quality – Holy crap, this is a big one! You know how the water quality in American cities…isn’t the best? Like, it might be safe to drink, but if you drink it straight from the tap it will have this chlorinated, chemically, gross taste. Not so in Japan! Their water sources are so pure, even in big cities, that the water just tastes like something out of a natural spring. Even in the huge mega-cities of Osaka and Tokyo, the water was delicious. Good job, Japan!

*The Money System/Cell Phone Network – Okay, here’s the first one where America wins. The money system and cell phone network in Japan are just silly. On the money side, the smallest paper money denomination is ¥1000, which would be like if $10.00 was the smallest paper money denomination in America. Moreover, many businesses (even businesses in the modern comforts of Tokyo) ONLY accept cash. The result is that you end up with an insane amount of change in your pocket that you need to keep on you while you travel, because you never know when you’ll need it for a cash only establishment. I have a small pouch thing that usually holds my laptop’s mouse that I had to repurpose during my travels as a coin purse where I kept change in my pocket.

On the cell phone network side, even in big cities much of Japan’s cell phone network remains at 3G or lower quality. Only Tokyo had small pockets of reliable 5G. The result is that your cell phone either won’t work or it will be ridiculously slow unless you invest in a pocket, mobile wi-fi (readily available at all airports in Japan and quite reasonably priced). We of course had a mobile wi-fi device while traveling Japan, which is why I could share so many videos and photos while on the fly throughout Japan. Anyways, the reason that I’ve included money and cell phone service together on this list: you may have noticed in photos of me during these travels that my jeans just don’t look right. It either looks like I gained a whole bunch of weight or like my jeans are stretched out to their limits, and it’s the latter. My pockets were stuffed with more stuff during this trip than I’ve ever had to carry on my person! One pocket held a coin purse full of way too many coins, one pocket held my iPhone, one pocket held our mobile wi-fi device (which was essentially a second iPhone in terms of size), and one pocket held my wallet, passport, and train passes. My pockets were bursting at the seams during this trip, and it’s nice to be back in the States where I don’t need to carry a bunch of coins and extra cell phone devices, etc. on my person at all times.

*Clothing/UniQlo – Because I lost my luggage, I had to buy all of my clothes during my trip to Japan. I got some cool stuff that now both act as memorable souvenirs from the trip and as a part of my new wardrobe! In fact, now that I’m back in the States, I now have an overabundance of clothing and will be donating some to charity. But the clothes that I got in Japan were not necessarily easy to come by…for example with shirts, I generally wear a medium, but a shocking number of men’s clothing stores in Japan only cater to large/extra large sizes. It’s more shocking because Japan isn’t necessarily known for having the tallest people in the world. Not sure if I have any deep point here…it was just kind of weird and resulted in me having to visit a lot of clothing stores just to find my clothes for the week.

Also, one of the clothing stores that I stopped at was a UniQlo (think Japanese Gap) in Tokyo. It was awesome because (a) it did cater to my size, and had such a wide-variety of clever, artsy clothes; and (b) its technology blew my mind. When it came time for me to buy my clothes, I approached what looked like a self-check out machine. It advised to place items in a little box area which I assumed I’d then scan the clothes from while moving over to a bag. But instead, the second I dropped the stack of clothes into the box, they were automatically rang up. The entire stack of clothes, instantaneously, catalogued and rang up with my total to pay. It was crazzyyyyyyy! I’d never seen technology like it before, and I’m wondering why here in the States we aren’t using that technology…everywhere. Here’s what it looked like (you can see I had just dropped the clothes into the box and the machine was now instantaneously telling me how many items I dropped into the box and their cost):

*Hey Dude! shoes suck – Because in Japan you often take your shoes off at certain restaurants and businesses while traveling around, I wanted a pair of shoes that I could easily slip on and off. Seeing all of the American commercials/hype surrounding Hey Dude! shoes, I decided to buy a pair for my travels. When I tried them on they felt extremely light and comfortable, and so I figured it was a good shoe. But…as my luggage got lost, I was limited the whole trip to ONLY having that pair of Hey Dude!’s, and I can now attest that the shoes are garbage. Just one week of walking in the shoes completely trashed them, they were incredibly uncomfortable for walking long distances, and they offered little-to-no support. By the end of the week, my ankle was sprained, I had blisters galore, and my entire body just ached, and it was all because of these crap shoes. Don’t buy Hey Dude!’s if you have to walk any amount of distance in your daily life. In fact, the only way that I could see a pair of Hey Dude!’s being a decent investment would be if you were buying them to be a lounge shoe around the house – but in that case, just do as the Japanese do and keep your shoes off in the house.

*Duolingo works – About a year ago, I started learning Japanese. I’d study it (and I continue to study it) for about 10-15 minutes each morning before getting up for the day. Now I don’t claim to be nihongo jouzu after one year of studying the language, but I will say that after just one year of Duolingo study I was able to hold small conversations in Japanese with native speakers. It was invaluable for asking directions, ordering food and requesting recommendations, being polite, and just engaging in banter and making connections with people in Japan. Japan is a moderately English friendly country. We could have likely gotten by with no Japanese, but even having that small base foundation made it so much easier to connect with people and resolve questions in Japan. Also, people in Japan get super excited and love it when you speak their language! Sometimes, they will become thrilled and start rapid speaking to you in Japanese, at which point you need to calm them down and bring them back to the level that you understand. Seriously though, if you’re going to travel to Japan, make that small investment and learn just a little bit of Japanese. It will pay off in huge ways, and you’ll enjoy your time in Japan that much more.

*Sleep – I don’t know why, but here in America I struggle with sleep/have insomnia all night, and then I’m tired all day. I know I’m not alone on this one – it’s a pretty common theme for many Americans. Who knew that the solution was to just put yourself on the other side of the world? In Japan, my sleep cycle was the most balanced it’s been in years. At night, I got tired and slept well, and during the day I was wide-awake. Problem solved!

*Food – Delicious and amazing. There’s something delicious for you in Japan regardless of your budget. You can spend $3.00 or $300.00 for a meal, and you’ll walk away feeling like you got your money’s worth and then some. Also, recently finding out that I can eat seafood and being able to soon thereafter enjoy a Michelin-star sushi restaurant’s sushi was life-changing.

*Transportation – Whether it’s by train, plane, or automobile, transportation in Japan is efficient, effective, and reasonably priced. Even down to getting through immigration and customs at the airport, the standard and source-of-pride is built around serving you, the traveler, and making sure that you can get through things as quickly and stress-free as possible. Navigating these systems in Osaka’s airport was a breeze compared to when I returned to America. Osaka had me through immigration and customs in about 15 minutes, there was someone at every step of the way to guide you and help you through the process, and they did everything with a smile on their face that made you feel welcomed and appreciated. Chicago O’Hare had me waiting in an inefficient, 50-minute long line where people barked orders at me, questioned me like I was a criminal, searched my bag for no apparent reason, and failed to offer even the slightest of smiles or level of human kindness. Both times traveling through Chicago, I didn’t get any sense that anyone was there to help me or assist me as a traveler. In fact the only things that I could discern Chicago O’Hare being concerned about were promoting marijuana amnesty boxes throughout the airport, and posting signs all over the place directing passengers to the nearest gender-neutral bathroom. America has devolved in its values, and it’s really starting to show. Japan offers a clear win when it comes to its transportation and immigration/customs processes…which brings me to…

*The kindness, respect for self, and respect for others in public – Ironically, Japan is not a Christian nation. Less than 1% of Japan identifies as Christian, and yet, wherever you go the Christian ideals of love of neighbor, self-respect, and service to others is on full display in the country on a daily basis, and people have smiles on their faces. They’ve gotten there through their own culture and Shinto practices, and through wars going back 1000s of years offering life-lessons on what happens when you care too much for self or for power, and not enough for community. The end result is a beautiful culture and a beautiful people with few self-destructive habits on display (no tattoos, no obesity, no marijuana smells or drunkenness on the streets, little to no criminal element, etc.). The women there are all gorgeous, the men carry themselves with honor, and out on the streets their children are openly celebrated by families and strangers alike. There is almost a communal feeling to raising kids in the country, resulting in children as young as 3 or 4 years old who are confident, gregarious even in crowds with strangers, and adventurous. I’ve never been so in love with a country or its people, and to offer a cheesy quote from The Last Samurai (about an American back in the 1800’s discovering this phenomenon), “there is indeed something spiritual in this place. And though it may forever be obscure to me, I cannot but be aware of its power.”

Japan is a stunningly beautiful country, with beautiful people, delicious food, and the balance of its traditional culture and values with the technology and amenities of the western world. It is a melting pot of past and future, east and west, and a place where the yin and yang of the masculine and the feminine are still openly celebrated and on display wherever you travel. This will NOT be my only trip to Japan, but rather my first. I’m hoping to go back as soon as next spring, to see the sakura blossoms and the great northern kingdom of Hokkaido. In fact, at this rate and based on how much I loved the place, Japan may just become my future home.

Cheers,

-Rob