Observations On The Far Abroad (Japan Edition)

The difficulty with traveling abroad, even for a bit longer of a period of time, is that making comparisons between your home culture and the place you are visiting is difficult.  Especially on tours, your time there is never enough and your visits are fairly managed such that one can end up in a bubble of tourists in a foreign culture.  Meals are very often with other tour groups.  Tour groups flock to the same locations for viewing.

The short hybrid experience I have in Japan is not quite that - for example, we are not in a tourist bubble and we take more local transportation and are exposed to more local things.  And there is a gentleman's agreement amongst ourselves that, at least for that time, the "Real World" will not intrude,  Still, being in a more local neighborhood, going in stores not specifically aimed at tourists and dining a bit more locally, one has the opportunity to at least note some differences or at least things that seem noticeably different.  Here are a few observations:

1)  Trash:  Japan, as is reported by almost everyone that goes, is clean. The litter that we have become used to as part of life in urban/semi-urban/rural America simply does not exist.  Yes, the odd piece of trash makes its appearance in a train station, but there is simply no comparison.

Interesting subpoint:  There are no public trash receptacles either.  Not even in some semi-public facilities.  People simply take their trash with them.  We learn to do it when we are there. 

The contrast of largely trash free and no public trash cans may seem to be an odd disconnect; I think it reflects on how Japanese culture emphasizes the responsibility of the individual to the larger culture.  

2)  Virtue Signaling: There was none that I could see anywhere.  That does not mean there was none going on - after all, I am a foreigner with the vaguest grasp of the Japanese language and Kanji.  But no business told me anything about anything they believed, other than the products that they offered.  The only "virtue signaling" - if you want to call it that - was a kamidana, the small Shino Shrines one sees in businesses.

3)  Quiet:  We spent somewhere between 45 minutes and 60 minutes on trains almost every day. Beyond just the fact that trains are always clean and almost always in better shape (maintenance and cleanliness) than my local mass transit, there is almost no conversation on the trains, and certainly no public phone calls. People just sit or stand silently, looking down at phones or books or with earpods in listening.  Even in the crush of a couple of rush hour trains, there is almost no conversation.  It is as if everyone is in their own little private shell, which can get compacted down to their body size - but remains intact.

4)  Tips: There are none in Japan.  What you are charged is what you pay, and there is none of that awkward "There is going to be a screen coming up in a moment..." nonsense.  That said, in all my trips to Japan (7 as an adult) I have never, ever had bad service.