Will Miss #238 - fans

You can buy fans anywhere in the world, but Japan is the (unofficial) home of fans and they are closely associated with the culture. Who hasn't seen the image of the beautiful Japanese woman holding a fan in front of her? Every summer, a wide variety of attractive, cheap, and free fans are available. You find plastic ones featuring ads being given away on the streets for advertising as well as

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Won't Miss #238 - eating at my desk

This is an old picture, but I'm too lazy to take a new one. However, that is pretty much the desk I still have and eat at. :-p
I have grown accustomed to many of the shortcomings of living in a very small space and I'm at peace with most of them. That being said, our apartment is too small for a dining table. When I was younger, that didn't trouble me much, but as I've gotten older and started to

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Will Miss #237 - no line jumpers

One of the major complaints that I hear when friends travel in other parts of Asia is that people don't line up when it is necessary to wait your turn for something. In China in particular, it's a free-for-all and can be quite disconcerting and aggravating in a crowded situation, but even in the U.S., you see some pretty selfish and bad behavior while waiting in line. The Japanese are masters at

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Won't Miss #237 - "inscrutable culture"

There is a notion that Japanese cultural concepts (and the underlying psychology) are too sophisticated for outsiders to comprehend, so most Japanese people won't even try to explain certain ideas to curious foreign folks. Frankly, I can tell you this is a crock. Many Japanese people can't explain Japanese cultural concepts for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the inability of

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Will Miss #236 - daruma dolls

Daruma dolls show up all over the place in Japan and even in Western countries when they want to show some sort of Japanese decor. In fact, I remember seeing one in the attic apartment set used for the American T.V. comedy "Third Rock From the Sun." Some people may know they are Japanese, but not know what they are used for. I don't like daruma for their design, but rather for the concept behind

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Won't Miss #236 - pedestrian overpasses

 A typical overpass, one of hundreds, on Ome Kaido Avenue.
I live near a large major street which is the fastest way for emergency vehicles to reach destinations between my home and other major mini-cities inside of Tokyo. Without access to this street, it is virtually impossible for emergency vehicles to get where they need to go. This long and important street is peppered liberally across its

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Quick Mention: This blog was reviewed

Just a quick mention that this blog was reviewed at the Japan Blog Review. It's an interesting site that will introduce those interested in Japan blogs to more of the same so you might want to give it a look.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

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Will Miss #235 - Japanese pottery

 
My husband and I don't give each other gifts for holidays anymore, but early on in our stay in Japan, we still did. One of my earliest requests was some hand-made Japanese pottery. In particular, I wanted some cups with traditional glazing and designs. There's something about the natural look and feel of this type of pottery which is comforting. It makes me feel like I'm consuming food or

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Won't Miss #235 - "do you speak Japanese?"

Some questions when asked have nothing but bad intentions behind them, and this is one of them. Note that there are only two types of people who ask me this question. One is students in language lessons who are supposed to only deal with me in English and my Japanese language ability has nothing to do with them (as I'm not going to speak Japanese to them regardless). The others are

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Will Miss #234 - the passive nature of Japanese people

Japanese people are generally pretty passive and tolerant. This is because their culture values emotional control and stoicism far more than many Western cultures and they have a culture which values "gaman" or "enduring suffering" rather than fighting back. They view the inability of foreign people to control their emotions or withhold their opinions in circumstances when expressing them might

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Won't Miss #234 - reluctance to express oneself

The Japanese are often reluctant to express themselves because their culture does not reward varying opinions. A lot of Japanese people will not have a debate or even a discussion with you about a topic of interest because they do not want to risk offending or upsetting you with a different opinion. In fact, many Japanese people will simply shake their head "yes" when you assert some viewpoint

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Will Miss #233 - takarakuji

 A window which sells Japanese lottery tickets.
"Takarakuji" is the Japanese version of the lottery. Let me say that I do not buy lottery tickets or gamble. To me, it's simply tossing ones money out the window because the odds are so low that you'll win as much as you spend, let alone more. That being said, I always get a kick out of the way the Japanese lottery works because the prizes really

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Won't Miss #233 - men first

When I ask my female students who have traveled abroad what they have liked about visiting a Western country, every one of them says that they like the "ladies first" mentality of the people in those countries. A lot of foreigners believe this to mean things like opening doors for women, pulling out chairs for them in restaurants, etc. There is no history of chivalry in Japan so it isn't

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Will Miss #232 - valuing cultural pursuits

A sign offering piano and electone organ lessons.
The prevailing attitude in the U.S. when it comes to education is that it should be in the service of earning money. In particular, people believe that you should spend your time pursuing only those things which will advance your career. This is one of the reasons that people hold liberal arts degree holders in contempt and have a higher regard

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Won't Miss #232 - low sofas

For reasons I'm sure that I can only guess at, the sofas in Japan seem to be built for munchkins. I'm not talking about the kind of furniture which has  you sitting essentially on the floor with a back support (of which there is plenty in Japan), but about Western-style sofas and sometimes cushy chairs that are just about 4-6 inches too low to be comfortable to sit on (because there is increased

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Posting Frequency Changes

As of the today, this blog will be going from a posting schedule in which at least one post is made everyday to a weekday schedule. New posts will only be made from Monday to Friday. The reasons for this are personal, and not of great interest to my readers but the gist of it is that I've been writing 14 posts (or more) per week on average for several blogs (mainly this one and my Snack Reviews

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Will Miss #231 - tachiyomi

One of the most fascinating things I witnessed early in my stay in Japan was large groups of people, particularly men, who stood in book shops and convenience stores and just read the magazines or books. The shop owners never sweated this, despite the fact that many people read entire magazines, books, or comic books (manga) and didn't make a purchase. The publications would sometimes become

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Won't Miss #231 - poor rain etiquette

I think this is a "Tokyo thing". It might also be a "treatment of females thing", or even a thing that is related to being a foreigner. I don't know all of the variables, but for quite some time I've noticed that people act incredibly selfishly when it rains. I realize most Japanese people react to rain as if they were composed of sugar and might melt away entirely should the drops touch them,

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Will Miss #230 - traditional healing

In the West, people tend to view any sort of healing which is non-scientific or medical in nature as useless. The Japanese embrace a variety of healing methods including acupuncture, acupressure, and herbal medicine. Many of my students partake of these types of healing to help them deal with stress or chronic pain. Many have told me that it helps them with things like back, neck, and shoulder

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Won't Miss #230 - Japanese cemetaries

As I mentioned in the previous post, I grew up around a cemetery and I have had an interest in grave markers as a result. The designs of the stones, the words written upon them, and the epitaphs always told me something about the people and how they felt. Some of the graves even told me something about how the people looked as photos were included as part of the stone design. Burial markers are

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Will Miss #229 - cremation as the law

A Japanese grave upon which someone has left an Ultraman figure, perhaps in memory of a child who has died.
I grew up in a house that was about a 15 minute walk through the woods from a cemetery. When I was a kid, my cousins, sister, and I used to tromp through the woods and wind up in that cemetery where we'd run around and look at the stones to see what they looked like and said. Sometimes,

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Won't Miss #229 - expensive, unpleasant water

Water in Tokyo is pretty expensive. In fact, it's sufficiently expensive that some Japanese people use their old bathwater to do laundry. My water bills recently went up 20% for no reason that I could work out, so I've taken to trying to save water by turning the shower water on and off when I can in order to cut back on water use. Of course, I usually do this in the summer when it's warm anyway

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Will Miss #228 - plethora of chestnut-based foods

I grew up around chestnuts, but we rarely ate them except perhaps around Christmas. In Japan, chestnuts are everywhere. You can buy them in foil packs or freshly roasted to snack onr or garnish food. They are used to make rice dishes, traditional sweets like manju, and more Western-style cakes. They are also often mixed with beans or made into a paste for fillings, and, of course, used in

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Won't Miss #228 - gaijin monkeys

While I have an intense dislike for the fact that many people view foreigners who teach as little more than gaijin monkeys, I have to acknowledge that some people do act like said monkeys. A "gaijin monkey" is a foreigner who puts on an act to entertain Japanese people. Such people often treat Japanese people as if they were children who needed to be energetically amused at all times. This

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Will Miss #227 - free tissues

If you're walking down the street in Tokyo, there's a pretty good chance someone will stick their hand out and offer you a packet of free tissues. One of the ways in which advertisers get people to actually take their ads is to place them on the back of pocket-size tissues. There are foreign folks who say they never buy their own tissues, and others who say they get so many of these free packets

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Won't Miss #227 - bosozoku

Our apartment is about a 30-second walk from a major road and a traffic light is just a few more seconds from the intersection of our little street and that road. At night, sometimes after midnight, and when our windows are open because of the heat, we will hear the ebb and flow of traffic as it zooms down the street and becomes suddenly silent when the light is red. Occasionally, rather than

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