BoneDensity
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I went to Japan not too long ago. The main thing for me is that I found that people would stare at me constantly, as if they had never seen anything like me before. It was good at first, sort of liked it, but after the first few days it just started grinding down on me. It’s them moments when you’re sat on the subway, briefly look up from your phone and there’s 10 pairs of eyes on you, makes you uncomfortable. At one point, a friend group around about my age came up and asked for a selfie through google translate, didn’t ask questions because i couldn’t, took it and they left, very strange little experience. Another time, in a queue at Universal Studios, the staring was unbelievable, felt like they were queuing up just to look at me, bloody human zoo I tell you, well eventually it turned into everyone in the queue on the adjacent sides waving at me, putting their thumbs up at me, to which I responded back to all of them, confused as I’ll ever be.
Something else I found is that people would always move away though in a crowd or on a street, sort of make room for me to walk by. I’m not exactly built like hulk though, I am about 6”3, but not exactly some sort of unit, so at a guess I would say because they feared I had covid or something. As a Brit, I felt like a bit of an alien over there, we are loud, rough, like to have a laugh, and it just felt like the Japanese didn’t match that sort of a wavelength on any level. They also follow everything by the book, but to extreme extents, I remember one time everyone coming out of a subway platform were queuing for an escalator whilst there were a set of normal stairs, empty, next to such, I picked up my suitcase and went up, skipping this pointless queue, they looked at me as if I had discovered fire.
This all said though it was a brilliant place, and these differences in behaviour and culture interested me more than anything, the rest of it was brilliant, if I had to go back to anywhere in the world it would be Japan, but at the same time, it’s one of the last places I would actually want to live at. Brilliant place, but most certainly not made for Brits like myself to stay there for the long term.
Something else I found is that people would always move away though in a crowd or on a street, sort of make room for me to walk by. I’m not exactly built like hulk though, I am about 6”3, but not exactly some sort of unit, so at a guess I would say because they feared I had covid or something. As a Brit, I felt like a bit of an alien over there, we are loud, rough, like to have a laugh, and it just felt like the Japanese didn’t match that sort of a wavelength on any level. They also follow everything by the book, but to extreme extents, I remember one time everyone coming out of a subway platform were queuing for an escalator whilst there were a set of normal stairs, empty, next to such, I picked up my suitcase and went up, skipping this pointless queue, they looked at me as if I had discovered fire.
This all said though it was a brilliant place, and these differences in behaviour and culture interested me more than anything, the rest of it was brilliant, if I had to go back to anywhere in the world it would be Japan, but at the same time, it’s one of the last places I would actually want to live at. Brilliant place, but most certainly not made for Brits like myself to stay there for the long term.
