This Is Japan
Explore everyday life in Japan
It’s hard to explain the small, but everyday differences about Japan because, even though they are obvious, they are very subtle and very deep. The subtlety of these differences and their cultural depth often leaves foreigners in Japan with the awareness that something is different, but like a word that sits on the tip of your tongue, the actual difference remains just out of reach.
For example, take record shopping in Japan. Many people have said that it is different, and for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is probably related to the quality and condition of the records themselves. How is it that records, many over thirty and forty years old now, can still be in nearly mint condition after having been owned, played, and having changed hands? And how is it that they can be sold with original record sleeves, album covers, and promotional posters?
I don’t know the answer to this, but I’m going to venture a guess. Things in Japan are typically assigned a purpose. Having a purpose, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways and times to use these things. One of the reasons why I think so many people ride ordinary bicycles around Japan as opposed to BMX style bikes and mountain bikes is because ordinary bicycles are thought of as the appropriate bicycle to use when riding around a town or a city. While riding to the station or to your friend’s house, you don’t need to do tricks and you most likely won’t be riding off-road, so you don’t need a BMX style bike or a mountain bike.
Likewise, records are things that have been relegated as a collector’s item. They are considered precious and of value, not only in a monetary sense, but in regard to their owner’s status as well. Records have a real ‘legitimacy factor’, and their condition is related to this. As a result, records have a specific way they should be handled. There is a way to care for them. There is a way to transport them.
Growing up in the States, I can’t tell you how many people I knew who owned records but didn’t own a record box for carrying their records around in. On countless occasions, I saw records thrown into backpacks, left sitting horizontally on car seats for days on end, crammed into milk crates and whatever else they fit in. In Japan, it seems to me that everyone I know who owns records has at least one, if not a number of record cases for holding and transporting records safely through any kind of weather. Many people also have wheel carts to help them safely pull their heavy record cases around with them.
It is just the way it is here. If you are going to collect records in Japan, you are going to be a record collector, and being a record collector requires that you have certain accessories. It requires that you approach records in a certain way. It is much more than just being a music fan and a vinyl buff. Yet it is the same. But in a very deep way, it is different.
For excellent thoughts on music from a Japan based DJ, please check out this blog Raw Select Music.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.
I have made two visits to Japan. My father traveled there extensively in the 70's and we often had Japanese visitors at our house.
I was certainly with the differences and the similarities. Here is a good example. Everywhere in the world we seem to be having trouble with under-age people and alcohol. In Japan, alcohol is available from vending machines. I cannot read Japanese but is there a declaration on the BUY button saying, I declare that I am of alcohol drinking age.
In Australia, we have major problems with alcohol and everyone who sells alcohol has to have a Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate (including the check out clerk in the supermarket). So we could never have alcohol sold via vending machines. Seems that Japan has an order that deals with this differently.
Vive la difference.
It's funny, I've been wondering about that lately, too. I haven't seen many beer vending machines on the street lately, and when I have bought beer out of them in the past, I didn't pay any attention to whether they had a way to distinguish whether I was a minor or not. I want to say that they didn't, but I'm not sure.
I know that the beer vending machines on boats and at onsens and bathhouses don't require any proof of age before you make a purchase.
The vending machines that sell cigarettes here require you to have a card that proves your age. You scan your card and then you can buy cigarettes. Obviously, if you knew anybody older than you who didn't smoke, you could just ask them to make a card and give it to you. Then you would be able to buy cigarettes. I don't know how many minors actually do this, though.
It seems incredible that these machines aren't taken advantage of, doesn't it.
Always fun to have eyes open for the subtle differences - and for the big ones. Beer vending is big for me - tells me there is a level of self control we do not see in our societies.
Keep up the lookout for this sort of thing - I love it.
Will do.
And, actually, I just remembered a TV show that I saw recently about the differences between Japanese and Chinese culture. A Japanese TV show set up a box in a park in China and a box in a shopping mall in Japan. Both boxes had a curtain covering a hole in the box and a sign that said don't look inside this box. Many people in China stopped and looked in the box, but only two or three people in Japan did. Many people in Japan looked at the box with apparent curiosity but ended up walking away without looking in the box.
The point of the show was to say that people in Japan are wary about taking risks and disobeying commands. I suspect this has something to do with why more minors don't buy beer out of vending machines. I also think the structure of schools over here has a lot to do with this too.