10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Japan
Konnichiwa! We’d like to talk to you about move to Japan. Whether you’re moving there permanently or just paying a visit, you’re in for a shock. Japanese culture is guaranteed to blow the mind of any westerner. It’s a beautiful, bizarre mixture of the very old and the ultra new. One day you’re walking between ancient temples and cherry blossom trees, the next day you’re sitting on a talking toilet. There are certain things you must do in Japan and certain things you must not do – and we’d hate for you to get them the wrong way around.
They have an ageing population
Japan has one of the world’s best life expectancies (nearly 84 years), which sounds wonderful. However, combine that with a falling birth rate and you’re in trouble. The proportion of over-65-year-olds is skyrocketing and young people aren’t having enough babies to make up for it. Jobs are more important and everyone’s too busy to think about starting a family. Over 25% of the Japanese population is aged over 65 and this is expected to reach 40% by 2055. That’s a lot of elderly people and not enough young people to look after them. Enter: robots. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe thinks artificial intelligence might be the answer. He wants to quadruple the number of robots working in the Japanese economy. If this sinister robotic future won’t teach the youth to have more kids, we don’t know what will.
Hi-tech toilets
Are you a fan of going to the toilet? If your answer was an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ then you will love Japan. Lavatory experiences are flashy affairs over there. The ultra-intelligent toilets, known as the ‘washlet’ or woshuretto, have more functions than you’ll know what to do with. Think water jets, seat-warmers, auto-flushes, weighing scales and a deodorizer. There are even some models that greet you when you enter, lift the lid up for you and play artificial flush noises while you ‘go’. They sound like expensive pieces of kit to an outsider, but in Japan you can find them in most restaurants, hotels and over half of all households. You’ll never want to use a manual flush ever again.
Bullet trains
Train travel in Japan is famously rapid. The average speed of the Shinkansen bullet train is a lightning 155mph, while the record for a Japanese bullet train is 375mph. Basically, they don’t like wasting their time on getting to places. For example, there are nearly 320 miles between Tokyo and Kyoto, but hop on the 8:00am train from the capital city and you’ll be in Kyoto before 10:20am. We were going to say “assuming there are no delays”, but that doesn’t really apply; the average delay is just 36 seconds. It’s very impressive. Once you’re sat on a fancy toilet inside a bullet train, you know you’re living the high life.
Tokyo is big
And we mean really big. Put a map of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Tokyo on top of the UK and it pretty much stretches from the top of London to the bottom of Manchester. It has a population of nearly 39 million people, which makes it the most populous city on Earth. If that achievement wasn’t enough, Tokyo is also forecast to have the tallest building in the world, called the Sky Mile Tower (to be completed by 2045, if you can wait that long). The city is neon-lit and futuristic, full of skyscrapers and modern gadgets, which is why it’s so weird that Tokyo doesn’t actually have a 24-hour metro system. That’s right: if you want to head home after 1am then it’s either a pricey taxi or a nighttime stroll.
The countryside is beautiful
Read an article about Japan and all you see is “Tokyo this, Kyoto that”, it’s ridiculous. The cities are impressive but the Japanese countryside is practically dripping with charm. Almost 70% of the country is forest and over 80% of it is mountainous, which is too much to ignore. Some of the rural spots you can visit sound like parts of a fairytale, such as the Blue Pond of Biei, the creaking Bamboo Forest of Sagano and the baby-blue flower fields of Hitachi. There are snowy mountains to the north, sand dunes to the west and the gorgeous beaches of Okinawa to the south. It’s enough natural variety to make your head spin. Whenever you’re sick of the city, just head out in any direction and eventually you’ll hit something lovely.
Cherry blossom fever
The Japanese are mad for flowers. Particularly sakura, known as ‘cherry blossom’, which bursts into bloom across the country once a year. It all starts at the southern tip of Japan in January and then moves upwards in a big pink wave, not reaching the northernmost islands until May. Centuries ago, people would gather under the trees for hanami (‘flower viewing’) parties, sipping on sake and admiring the colours. Today, the enthusiasm for this pinkness is extreme. Every brand releases a cherry blossom-flavoured version of its product. There’s the Starbucks sakura coffee (the mighty Sakura Strawberry Pink Mochi Frappuccino), the Asahi sakura beer (Cherry Blossom Banquet), sakura KitKats, sakura ice-cream, sakura Pepsi, cherry-blossom-and-butter crisps, we could go on for a very long time. Teams of meteorologists try to predict when the cherry blossom will bloom and broadcast their forecasts on television. It’s crazy, it’s pink and it’s very Japanese. However, there’s also a tinge of sadness to the whole affair; the flowers last only for a week before floating off to their deaths. Sakura is the ultimate Japanese symbol of the beautiful, fleeting nature of life.
It’s Tremendous Risk-free
People just aren’t that interested in crime over there. Perhaps the annual cherry blossom just soothes the hell out of everyone. The Japanese language does have a word for ‘crime’ (hanzai) but what’s the point? Drug use, gun violence and homicide rates are all mercifully low over there. The Global Peace Index 2017 ranked Japan as the 10th most crime-free nation on Earth, which is incredible for a country of 127 million people. Likewise, in the same year, the Economist named Tokyo the safest city in the world (and Osaka third). If it’s the thrill of violent crime you’re looking for, Japan is not for you.
The unspoken rules
The main problem with unspoken rules is that nobody’s actually going to tell you them. If you start to break one in public, everybody around you will start to think you’re a terribly offensive moron, and you won’t know why. We’d like to spare you the embarrassment and tell you some of the rules now. Firstly, don’t be too loud in public, especially on trains. If you’re travelling by rail, you should avoid phone calls, loud conversations and blowing your nose. People can’t achieve their Japanese tranquility if you’re nearby making a racket. Don’t leave a tip in restaurants unless you want to offend the staff. Always remove your shoes when you enter someone’s house. If you ever find yourself receiving someone’s business card, take it with two hands and then read it a bit before putting it away. Finally, loudly slurping your noodles is fine. It’s sounds gross but quiet eating will probably draw more stares. Slurp away!
There are actually earthquakes
A lot of them. About 1,500 earthquakes hit the country every year. You’re barely over one wobble before the shaking begins again. Japan is located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is about as fun as it sounds. Around 90% of the world’s earthquakes take place along this huge fault line, so Japan has more quakes than it knows what to do with. Some terrible incidents have taken place in the country’s recent past, namely the 9-magnitude 2011 earthquake which killed nearly 20,000 people. Fortunately, the Japanese have got very good at preparing for the worst and many of their urban buildings have fancy anti-earthquake designs. Most impressive are the Shinkansen bullet trains; the moment a quake begins, a train travelling at 187mph can come to a halt within 300m. Yowza!
Japanese has a few alphabets
If you think Japanese sounds difficult to learn, wait until you hear about the alphabets. There are three of them, called kanji, hiragana and katakana, and you basically need to get your head around each one before you can fully understand the language. Hiragana has 26 letters, so that’s the same as the Latin alphabet. Katakana has 46 letters, which is a bit bigger but still manageable. Get these two under your belt and then you just need to master kanji, which is a quick 2000 letters. The shorter alphabets are used for grammar while kanji is used for concepts, but they’re all as important as each other. If this sounds like too much effort then you could just rely on sign language and smiles.
What now?
Hopefully you’re feeling a little more clued up on Japan. ‘21 things’ barely scratches the surface of their culture, but it’s probably given you a fairly good idea. Japan is lucky to have such a rich ancient history, but it’s also got a seriously exciting future. How fast will the bullet trains travel in twenty years? Will they be able to travel in time? If so, how fast? The questions are endless and nobody knows the answers. If you’ve got your hāto set on Japan then a life of talking toilets and cherry blossom coffees await. Just scrub your tattoos off before you get on the plane.
