I recently moved to Japan in November for 1 year in order to discover the culture of my girlfriend! As I will go back to Europe for 2 weeks, I thought it was good time to think about what I discovered in Japan! I had the luck to be able to travel and discover a lot of culture but this was my first time in Asia! I live in Yokohama which is a city just south of Tokyo. Going from Yokohama to Tokyo is just a 30 minutes train ride! The Tokyo/Yokohama area is known to be the most top 1 mega city of the world!
Caution: This is my limited experience in living 3 months in Japan! This is a small attempt on describing what was new to me and what I loved! The best way to discover Japan is for sure to live their yourself!
Here are the thing that most surprised me during those 3 first months:
So the first point I want to underline is I live in a BIG city!
With a lot of people!
But everything is fine because Japanese people are well known for being organized and respectful! And this is true! They queue for for everything, they wait for traffic light…
And because their is a lot of people and limited space, they play tennis on the roofs!
And to save more space, they even stack their cars!
So if you go hiking on a beautiful day in the nearest mountain of Tokyo, it looks like this!
But when you finally make it, everyone enjoy watching Fuji san!
And eating! In Japan, most of the time activities ends in eating something!
Food is one of the number 1 interest in Japanese people! And they make awesome food! (this is actually a traditional breakfast)
Cute food!
And for sure Sushis! Which don’t have anything to do with the one I could eat in Europe or US.
In Japan, people love also uniforms and costumes, for example for cooking grilled fish!
Or visiting Walt Disney!
Or more traditional places
And when it comes to walk on tatami or inside anyone house.
Don’t forget to remove your shoes and put on the slippers
And relax and be zen
The calm and silence can also been seen in the center of the city! Big parks and nature surrounded by sky scrapers.
Japan have a really complex relationship with nature. It’s so embedded in the cities but also so powerful as known by earthquake and tsunamis..
But don’t forget about the technology!
Even until toilets which are heated, open and close themselves and even make sounds to cover your own ones..
This is my small view of Japan at the moment. I’ll write more in the future as I love it!
I’m currently in Japan thanks to a Working Holiday visa of one year since there is an agreement between France and Japan. And this is awesome as I can visit, work here as much as I can!
Thanks for the comments on Hacker News! All photos were taken by me and are free to use!
I love travelling, don’t forget to check my awesome Android travelling quiz game here!