Centre > Travel diaries > Japan 2000 > Japanese lifestyle
I wrote this article for a magazine after my return from Japan; it covers the daily things I noticed during my trip, the customs and beliefs and general way of life.
What strikes us at first in Japanese society is the group's priority over the individual. Unlike countries where competition reigns and each must look tougher or more important than others, the social balance relies here upon humility. The renowned courtesy comes from the habit of always being humbler than the other. When mentioning somebody else's mother, a Japanese will say Anata no okâsan ("Your honorable Mother"), but to speak of his own he will humbly say Watashi no haha ("My mom"). Whatever the subject, different words are used according/ to whether they relate to the other (as laudating as possible) or to oneself (as lowly as possible). The Japanese are unrivalled in vague and softened expressions. "No" (Iye) is avoided because it is too strong a word; it is better to say Chigau ("[The answer] differs"). As you can imagine, polite expressions abound, and there are several versions of Thank you, Goodbye, Please, each corresponding to a certain degree of deference. Enter a shop, and all the clerks go Irashaimaseeeeeeeee ("Can I help you?"). During the first few minutes after the opening, the personnel stands still to bow deeply before visitors. Then only, they can get back to work. When speaking to a customer, a vendor always stands bowed so as to be lower placed than him or her. The custom of bowing surpasses stereotypes: they bow upon meeting, parting, thanking, agreeing, apologizing, at the wheel of a car or even while riding a bicycle if we gave them right of way. Most machines, from the ticket vendor to the phone booth, display an animated character that bows to thank you from deigning use it.
The Japanese have courtesy in their blood, to the extent of wearing a surgeon mask when they're sick so as not to contaminate others. The system of manners is however totally different from the western standard. Any real Japanese eats noisily for instance. I believe the basic daily food, noodles, is at the root of this habit as they are hard to eat without vigorous sucking, which can't help but be a little noisy. On the other hand, while a natural gesture for us would be to stick the hashi (chopsticks) in the rice, this means a death threat and is an absolute no-no. Don't think that the Japanese would understand that as a foreigner, you may not know their ways; just like westerners tend to expect everyone to learn their own standard, they don't realize that you may not know the proper way to behave. If one is tired, no need for a bench – crouching in the middle of the street does not constitute a loss of dignity, whatever the age. To be drunk does not seem to be more dishonoring, judging by the sight of salary men celebrating the end of their workday, stumbling through the streets at night...
Entertainment forms are not all as intoxicating. There are discos, pubs (traditional or modern), pachinko (sort of casino). The favorite of young Japanese (which does not exclude a previous intoxication!) is the karaoke. Several can be found in any neighborhood, some of them open 24 hours a day. Behind the speaker the youth can let out their emotions, since in the society it's bad form to show them. On the street they mostly show impassive or smiling faces, sometimes a laugh (especially women), but without ever letting go of their self-control completely. Amazing but true, when someone shows strong emotions in public the others immediately know that person is mentally unstable.
One would expect the youth to be in rebellion against this social exigency that corners many city-dwellers to madness or suicide. I could be wrong, but from what I have observed, this doesn't happen, thanks to safety valves like karaoke. They also do observe antique yet practical customs, such as wearing the yukata (summer kimono) with geta (wooden sandals) when it's too hot for western-style clothing. We can even see young men with umbrellas or fans. What does revolt them is their uniformity. The Japanese population is very homogeneous, which is particularly obvious at the level of the hair. They all have the same straight black hair, and as a result most of them dye it, in blonde, red or even plain brown, to be different. Outside work, there's no clothing taboo, and Japanese fashion is striking! Every Sunday groups of young people meet in places like Harajuku station, to wear the craziest outfits. These reunions have no purpose other than to be with friends and show off to each other costumes and make-up that couldn't be worn anywhere else. No suggestive or vulgar clothing though: despite the mind-blowing extravagance, young Nihon-jin are modest.
Japan is full of practical and amusing gadgets, like this device placed at the entrance of a grand store that wraps a nylon bag around wet umbrellas. Public restrooms don't only have automatic taps, they have automatic soap taps – but curiously, there's seldom anything to dry our hands. The cherry on the cake is this toilet seat with strategically directed water sprays and airblower. Alongside these modern facilities, the traditional onsen (communal baths) are as popular as ever. There you wash the Japanese way – seated on a little stool, armed with a bowl of water. Similarly, MacDonald's (which has adapted and offers Teriyaki Macburger) hasn't wiped out the local "fastfoods" that offer mostly noodles in a soup – ramen, the most famous, udon, so thick, or soba, eaten cold. Sushi is far from being the daily dish westerners imagine it to be. The great surprise for me was to be offered shukerem – French choux a la cr?me!
Iced tea is more common than water, but there's also milk iced tea, flavored water, iced coffee... At every street corner we find rows of vending machines for drinks, cigarettes, camera rolls, and even sometimes hot noodles. To foreigners they are an adventure and a gamble, for the design on the cans says nothing of the contents! English is not common in Japan. The main train stations are indicated in romanji (Latin characters) but most of the other inscriptions in our alphabet are there just to look cool, and do not indicate anything useful to us. Kanji and the kana, the country's three writing systems, reign unchallenged. Kanji characters are ideograms (each sign is a word) imported form China, used for common nouns and the roots of verbs. The kana (hiragana and katakana) are syllabaries (each sign is a sound); the one is used for endings and grammatical particles, the other for foreign words and names. These three systems are used simultaneously, and there are 50 katakana, 50 hiragana and 1006 basic kanji: no wonder school years are so intense!
Back to the trains and stations. The Nihon-jin have the admirable ability of falling asleep on the train to wake up right at their station. Those who do not sleep read huge manga (comics) printed just for train-reading, on very cheap paper. Since recently, they can also write their emails during journeys thanks to email phones and pocketboards. Portable phones are adorned with print-clubs, lucky artifacts...
Japan never broke up with its past, so we find everywhere a great choice of these talismans, often modernized. There's the turtle for longevity, the frog for abundance, little bags for love, but mostly and in all styles, maneki neko the adorable lucky cat with its paw raised. Someone with a desire may buy a daduma, like a big head where you color in the left eye to make a wish, then the right eye if it comes true. If it hasn't happened by New Year, the daduma is thrown in the fire. Who hasn't heard of the thousand paper cranes? The tsuru (crane) is the most important motif in origami, the art of paper-folding, and every Japanese learns to make at least this bird, which is a national symbol and a prayer by itself. It is said that folding a thousand paper cranes will bring a perfect health, and in every temple we can see garlands of multicolored tsuru add a note of drunkenness to the majestic red and black lacquer. Above, floating in the wind, are hung zigzag forms of white paper that keep the evil spirits away from the shrines.
Shinto and Buddhism have been cohabiting for 1500 years in the land of the rising sun, and their practices are difficult to tell apart now given that the Japanese integrate them as they like. This makes for a spiritual attitude that is at the source of their great respect for nature and other people. All temples are simultaneously tourist sites (for the locals themselves) and fully functional cult places, to visit as a family on holidays. The population is as ritualistic in religion as in daily life: facing the altar, they throw a coin in a wooden urn or ring a gong before praying. Lower down stands the sacred fountain with the long spoons that allow to draw water for drinking or washing one's hands, as well as a huge sand container where visitors stick incense before standing in its fumes. Oracles can be pulled from a drawer before being tied to a panel or a tree, which insures that they will happen (or not, if they're undesirable). Often hordes of pigeons settle in a temple complex. Children and adults feed them, as occurs in any other country, but here they can't stand the pigeons touching them, let alone landing on them!
Incense, abundantly used in temples, is no less used at home where we find it even in the bathroom. To burn it within the home is a hygiene measure, as is the habit of removing one's shoes in the genkan (a space just inside the door, lower than the floor). It is considered disgusting to wear shoes inside a house, for that brings in all the dirt from the street. Even in some restaurants and museums one has to take off oneÕs shoes and wear slippers – and change them again to go to the restroom. Even the Japanese slippers have nothing to do with what we know: the foot rests on a very rough surface that works as reflexology and helps the blood flow.
Politeness is equally present within a family. Even if a sliding door is open, they stand behind it to speak to someone inside the room, rather than barge in. They use three suffixes when addressing someone: san, respectful, chan, affectionate, and sama, deferent. In the home we find them in Okasan ("Mother"), Onechan ("big sis")... Upon leaving the house it is customary to say Itte ikimasu ("I'm going and will be back"), and Tadaima upon returning ("I'm back"). Sayonara is used solely for long or permanent absences. And therefore... Itte ikimasu!
