There are many small things about Japan that we didn't include in the posts, but were worthy of being spoken about, from the kick-ass bathrooms to the weird Kit Kat flavors. In honor of our marvelous, yet short, visit in this incredible country, we'd like to tell you about all the little things that we love about Japan (some are both of us, some are one of us) in no particular order:
1)
Restrooms - Anyone who doesn't understand why a toilet would be on a list of awesomeness has clearly never been to Japan. Other than the fact that they are almost always heated, to the point where you butt's feeling as hurt when one isn't (not to mention your central nerve system), they almost all come with a remote control (with such features as bidet, extra strength bidet, and a sound to play while you are doing your thing), and many of them also have toilet seat sanitizer, which wasn't as exciting for Rony as it was for Talia, but she's a girl. Talia especially liked the bathrooms that had drawings on the doors indicating if the toilet was Western or Japanese, and almost every bathroom - and always at malls and airports - there was at least one that actually had a baby seat in it so that you could sit your baby down while you sit down to do your thing.
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| Sit or stand? |
Their coolest invention, which should totally be used in Israel and other countries with severe water issues, is this one: There are many toilets that, when you flush them, the water comes out through a faucet on top of the tank for you to wash your hands with. The water is then used in the tank for the next time you flush. Can you say genius?!
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| Such an awesome invention. We need this in Israel |
While usually a restroom is an important place that we always need, in most countries it's not usually easy to find outside of one's house. Well, not in Japan. There is always a restroom around: On the street (public toilets), at the mall, on the subway, on the trains, of course. And there are always signs indicating where is the nearest is, on the street and on different maps we had during our trip. That's the Japanese way: Never feel discomfort because you have an urgent need.
2)
Kit Kats - The first place that we saw interesting Kit Kats was in Kyoto, a few days after arriving in Japan. They had green tea-flavored Kit Kats and another that we can't remember. As we continued our travels through the country, we found out that there were a multitude of other flavors, ranging from blueberry cheesecake, apple, potato, orange and strawberry, to more "exotic" flavors, such as soy, chili, and wasabi.
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| Yum... wasabi Kit Kats! |
3)
Reversible seats on trains - Almost all of the trains we were on, other than the subways trains, had a button on the seat that would let you turn around the chairs. Many times, we boarded a train at the first stop, when the train had just arrived from the same direction we were going in, so when the travelers all got off the train, the cleaning staff went in to clear and turn all the chairs around. There were several times during our time Japan where we reversed our seats, especially one time where the train switched direction mid-way. This is totally cool and we
loved it and wish we had to do it more often.
4)
Hot beverage vending machines - There are vending machines
everywhere in Japan, on every street. While they always have regular, cold beverages as usual (from colas to water to juices), they also have hot drinks, ranging from coffee and tea to hot chocolate and soup (for real). It's
soooo nice to be able to have a cheap and warm drink at any point, and we found ourselves looking for a vending machine more than once.
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| Blue means cold drinks, red means warm drinks |
5)
Sweet baked goods - While the Japanese say they don't eat many sweets, and, in truth, there isn't that much candy to be found, they excel in the pastry department. Every city and prefecture we went to had their own specialty, and we tried almost every type - and loved almost every one of them. If the most popular filling anywhere we know would be chocolate or vanilla, in Japan it is red bean, which is sweet. All in all - yummy!
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| SOOOO delicious! |
6)
Smoking areas - While Japan is incredibly advanced with their smoking areas in the streets - there are many places where you are not allowed to smoke outside and only at specific smoking stations - they are way behind Western countries, and most of the restaurants have smoking areas. While this isn't a "new" thing, we didn't even realize how used to non-smoking restaurants we are until Talia kept walking into the smoking areas. It's gross, but whatever. It's probably our only complaint about Japan.
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| Smoking areas on the street |
7)
Music at stop lights - Almost everywhere in Japan, when the pedestrian light turns green, music plays to let you know that you can cross. While Australia always has a special beep that lets you know you can cross, we really loved the music in Japan. In some places, they would divide the music between the four different crossings - simple, but awesome.
8)
Pachinko - Pachinko is a Japanese addiction. People can actually make a living off of it. It's a cross between a ping ping machine and a slot machine where you do something or other with balls that we didn't understand but you can read
here if you're incredibly bored. Gambling is illegal in Japan, so instead of money (like quarters in Vegas), here they use little silver balls. When they are done playing, they take the silver balls and exchange them for a prize, like a camera. From what we understood, they then take the prize to a pawn shop and receive money for the prize. :-) These places are noisy and always full of people - it's hilarious.
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| A Pachinko machine |
9)
High-pitched voices - This is, probably, the hardest point to get across here.
All the salespeople in Japan - and we mean
ALL of them - speak in an insanely-high voice when customers enter the store. They great people who pass by them constantly, and it's really funny the first time, and freaky every time thereafter. When you see us, please ask us for an imitation. :-)
10)
Short skirts in the winter - For some unfathomable reason, Japanese females do not realize that when it is snowing outside. We saw countless girls (not children) wearing short skirts in the freezing weather. In second place was 1992-fashion of tights with shorts over them, which isn't much better. Our only explanation for it is that children in Japan go to school in shorts and short skirts year-round, including winter, so by the time they are in their 20s, they have lost all feeling in their bodies.
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| Someone who didn't get the memo that the white stuff is snow |
11)
Tissue advertising - The most popular form of advertising, bar none, was tissue paper. We received countless numbers of tissue packs that had advertising on them. If we were Japanese, we would have received more (some people wouldn't give it to us). What this basically means is that you don't really have a need to buy any tissues, even during the winter. It rocks. :-)
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| This may be 1/4 of what we got |
12)
Tourist Information - Tourist information
rocks in Japan! Every single place you go has a tourism office with maps and coupons and sometimes even free gifts for travelers! It's marvelous. We came to rely on these offices so much, that we kept lamenting the lack of such offices in Israel. When we returned to Israel, we went to the Information desk at the airport and found out that the Tourist Information in Tel Aviv was closed a few years ago, but there is one at the municipality by Rabin Square and supposedly a really great one at the airport (so make sure you stop by there for information if you need any).
13)
Plastic food - Almost every restaurant in Japan has plates outside in a window that shows several of their offered dishes. These are mouth-watering and so realistic. It's obviously plastic, but we seriously entered many restaurants based solely on these replicas. They should have them everywhere.
- Every time a train was about to arrive at a station, classical-type music played to get travelers' attention before the announcement. Music played at the train stations, too. It got to where we actually waited for the music to listen to the announcements. :-)
And this is the list that we are able to remember. We know there is a lot that we forgot - we often remembered random things we wanted to add to the list when we were carrying all of ours bags on the way somewhere, so they were forgotten.
Here are the last pictures from Japan, including some new ones of some of these random things and our last evening:
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