20 Things I Like About Japan

Sometimes I worry that all I’ve done is complain.

Life in Japan is hard, sure. But I’ve stayed for three years. Outside of work, and loneliness, and the constant miniature stresses of everyday life, Japan has clearly captured something in my imagination that has inspired me to stay. These things are small, too, just like the annoyances, but simpler: Pleasure is easy, after all, misery is complicated. So I can sum up 41 things I like about Japan in a single, massive blast of positive vibes, and then I can direct people back here when they mention my constant stream of narcissistic complaints and criticisms. I am sure that there are more than this, many things I’m forgetting, so consider this a survey, not an end-all list.

1. Hanami (Cherry Blossom Season)
   It annoyed me to discover that Washington, DC has cherry blossoms that bloom at the same time as Japan’s, because my jaded Washington friend kept acting like they weren’t all that cool. The high school kids in Japan are pretty blasé, as well: “Cherry Leaf. Is… Boring.”
   But I can’t walk through the park in the Spring without being swept up in the beauty of the damn things, even going so far as to write haiku:
   Cherry blossoms stuck
   to the bottom of my shoes,
   only four months left.
2. Kit-Kats
   The Kit-Kat innovation factory slowed down after 2011, but I will miss scratching the itch in the candy aisle of every new convenience store I find myself in. Visiting new towns was always tied to the possibilities of tasting a new Kit-Kat. There are regional Kit-Kats, sorted by prefecture; then there are seasonal Kit-Kats, rotated nationally every season. I’m leaving on a high note: Passionfruit.
   But I’ve had Rum Raisin, two kinds of Matcha, Sakura, Sakura-Matcha, Blueberry Cheesecake, Pumpkin, Soy Sauce, Cinnamon, Sweet Potato, Strawberry, Pudding, Spicy Citrus, Pancake, Orange, Powdered Mochi, and more that I can’t even remember. Surprising highlights: Sweet Potato.
3. Silence after Sunset
   The siren rings throughout my town at 6 p.m., and the children all go inside. There’s a calmness to the night then. Unless it’s summer cicada season, there’s hardly a sound in the neighborhood, just the occasional distant clanging of the subway crossing.
4. Polite Dogs
   I never liked dogs. The only reasons dogs don’t attack and kill you is because the thought hasn’t crossed their mind yet. But in Japan I came around to a couple of breeds. The Shiba-Inu, in particular, is a polite dog, small enough to be cute but big enough to be a dog.
   There’s one that wanders around my street sometimes. It usually stops to look at me, mouth closed, straightforward and all business. It doesn’t bark or run up to me, doesn’t threaten me or run away. Just has a look and, I imagine, gives me a little bow before carrying on home.
5. Trains
   Trains are great. They’re quiet and convenient. I remember looking at the road in America once and thinking, with awe for Franklin Roosevelt, that this pavement I stood on spanned the entire country. I could go anywhere from here. The trains in Japan feel that way – there’s a train to go home, next to the train to go to Tokyo. All that’s between me and an adventure is where I decide to wait on the platform.
6. Parks
   There’s a park near my house with a 4.5 kilometer running path spanning a lake. Inside the lake is an island, and beside the lake is a rose garden with a windmill, a Shinto shrine, a baseball field, a public gymnasium, and a sculpture garden. All free, all just sitting there for me to run around. Urban planning, when Japan decides to apply it, is impeccable, though of course this has a lot to do with having enormous wealth to spend on them.
7. Themed Dining
   You can eat dinner in a sixth-grade classroom complete with a blackboard and a pop quiz, you can get locked into a prison cell, you can get a Mongolian yurt (with a costume). There’s one bar here that is inside a cave, down the street from a bar themed like 1980’s Japan, which is down the street from a bar themed like 1940’s Japan. There are all-you-can-eat pizza buffets and places with boiling oil at your table to deep-fry your own food. The absurd eating experiences in Japan get all the attention, but that ignores another key point: The food in Japan, and the atmosphere in most restaurants, makes it ridiculously easy to spend money every weekend. Beautiful, dimly lit, romantic dining is the norm.
8. Nomihodai
   This is unheard of where I’m from: Pay $30 and drink as much alcohol as you can for 2-3 hours. I’ve been served pitchers of gin and tonic. A typical night out starts with a 2-hour nomihodai and then moves to karaoke, where you get an additional nomihodai built into the cost of the booth. An exhilarating means to a miserable morning.
9. Karaoke
   Private booths are the only way to go. No enduring the endless stream of drunken strangers, you can book a room with drunken friends and endure each other’s wails. Karaoke is a grand way of connecting on a level that didn’t exist for me in America: Sitting around, singing to each other in all your unabashed, off-key glory seems, somehow, to bring people closer together than anything else we could be doing.
10. Okonomiyaki
    An unheard-of food in the States, Okonomiyaki in my town transcends all other Japanese cuisine. Savory batter with chunks of pork, shrimp and cabbage baked in, topped with barbecue sauce and, with the modan specialty, topped off with noodles. No, this is not how it is done in the traditional okonomiyaki homelands of Hiroshima and Osaka. But, having had the dish in both locales, I can assure you that there is no better option than Bochi-Bochi modan okonomiyaki in the sleepy suburban city of Kasuya, Fukuoka Prefecture.
11. Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine
    The shrine dedicated to the spirit of knowledge is a pilgrimage spot for students just before all major entrance exams. It is also just a beautiful and astounding temple in a rustic old town that is a touch of Kyoto in Kyushu. The plum blossoms here are prettier than the cherry blossoms. In the first autumn after I arrived in Japan, I stumbled into this shrine during a Winter Equinox ceremony. Women in traditional robes raking the sand into circles while live musicians performed for a crowd of only maybe 20 of us. It was breathtaking and serene:
12. Superstitions
    Speaking of shrines, there are plenty of good luck amulets, fortunes, and superstitions to stick to. As an expat with a life that sometimes seems completely out of my control, superstition has been a reassuring, albeit empty, way to pretend that there is some greater force guiding my way through the muck. It’s comforting and fun to get caught up in it all.
13. Kyoto
    If you and I ever get married, Kyoto is my top honeymoon destination. Be warned.
14. Telephone Booth Bars
    Open-container laws in Japan are relaxed, which means that enterprising individuals can open their own bar in any public location. I suggest starting your own late-night speakeasy in a telephone booth. Cram in, turn on your iPhone and share a bottle of wine. Just steer clear of residential neighborhoods, lest your bar get raided, 1920’s style.
15. Purikura
    Many expats get jaded by the sticker-photo-booth-on-steroids phenomenon that is purikura in their first year. I did not. Purikura is fantastic. Everything that comes out of them is a weird masterpiece of snapshot photography, like a gigantic toy camera room. I’ll miss the option of convincingly changing my hair color and unconvincingly being forced to have enormous eyeballs.
16. Village Vanguard
    Village Vanguard is basically a novelty gift store, the equivalent of Spenser’s gifts in New England. But it’s all Japanese. Weird books, strange toys and cameras, random video game merchandise, strange inventions – everything people think of when they think of “wacky Japan” is actually limited to the walls of Village Vanguard (and certain floors of Loft).
17. Ignoring Festivals
    Look, of course I love festivals, too, but there is something about having a festival go on around you while you are on your way to do something else that really drives home the fact that you live in Japan. It occurred to me when I was going to meet a friend at a bar and passed six women in kimonos playing shamisen while four bare-chested men banged taiko drums and a woman danced with a fan: “Oh, there’s a festival today.” On to my friend! Of course I’ve enjoyed the food stalls and the weird races and centerpieces of many festivals, but something makes you feel really settled once you treat these things the way you would treat a street festival at home. It means Japan has stopped being an exotic places full of once-in-a-lifetime experiences that you feel guilty not participating in. That’s oddly comforting.
18. Being waved at by a giant dead fish.

Every so often you walk down a street in Japan and there’s a guy in a really convincing plush costume. It’s not like I think a giant fish head is really hanging out waving at me, but the costumes are so detailed that my imagination definitely treats it more like a weird animal than a person sweating in a giant cardboard box. Not to mention that I don’t understand the logos they are representing on any level. I once watched a giant penguin jumping rope at a firefly festival, once had my dinner partner calmly interrupt me to say “The bear is waving at us” and turning around to see she was right.

1. Never tipping
   Who can do the math? Meals are more expensive, but more convenient, and Japanese service is better than anywhere else I’ve been. I remember eating at a sushi restaurant in America and saying “Can I have the soup?” and the guy literally said, “I don’t know what you’re asking me, man.” That guy still ended up getting a 20 percent tip, because I am a warrior for House Egalitarian. Meanwhile in Japan the waitstaff makes me feel as if they are genuinely delighted by my appearance at their door. Paying American servers $2.25 an hour feels barbaric by comparison. No wonder they’re always so angry.
2. Kaitenzushi
   On the flip side of the polite service is the absence of service people altogether. The conveyor belt sushi delivery process is something I’ll miss as a regular fix for my snappy dining needs. Sit down and grab any plate that strikes your fancy for as little as 100 yen each.