Culture Shock! Japan!

Ok! today we are going to learn about what I've learned about the Japanese so far!

They are crazy drivers, but but are really good. It is really hard to get a lisence and it costs something like 300 dollars to get one in Japan. So you have to really want to drive if you want to drive.

Many Japanese don't like sugar and sugary food. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think its because most of their traditional foods are not sugary at all. However, the Japanese do have sweets in their tea ceremony. Also, nowadays they have some of the best tasting candy I've ever had.

They have very hi-tech cell-phones, and love to glitz them out. There is this really cool thing on most everyones where you can send your profile to another phone using an infrared sensor. You can also get pictures and songs, anything, from it. They also like those little plastic gem-things that they stick on their phones. some are completely covered with them.

One thing that Japanese girls really like are "pikura". they are those photo booth machines that you see in the malls. Well they have them too, but ten times more decked out. So far I've been taken to two of them. Using the infrared you can get your pictures on your phone, and you can print them out too.

They are extremely fast shoe-taker-offers. It usually takes me like a half a minute to put my shoes on, sitting down, and yet it seems like they just walk right into them. It's because they never wear their outside shoes inside (except in stores), so wherever they go, they need to take off their shoes and put on some slippers.

They are also really fast eaters, and can eat really hot food just as fast. I have not mastered, or even begun to master, the fine art of Japanese slurping. It is considered impolite to not slurp your noodles, soup, or hot o-cha (Japanese tea). Why, do you ask? Because it's freakin hot! Slurping cools the stuff right down! And yet somehow I always end up splashing everywhere. Ah, with practice comes perfection.

For some reason, they always want to know your blood type. I have no idea why. (mom and dad, whats mine?)

Everybody, young and old, are obsessed with American culture. Mostly Disney, the Peanuts, Elmo, but also girls are especially into playboy, and teens Jamaican culture (two people have told me that it really has nothing to do with marijuana, but I'm not convinced)

They have vending machines everywhere. And I mean everywhere. We were driving through a pretty farmland/woodland type area, and right on the side of the road, next to some garage or warehouse, was a big vending machine. In school, the malls, at the car repair shop my host grandfather owns, in front of any given building you might happen to walk by. Also there are rows and rows of those little souvenir machines, you know the ones you put 50 cents into and out comes a little plastic ball with some cheap toy that breaks the next day. Theirs are better quality, but cost 100 yen.

Every hour, for about a minute, I hear about between 2 and 4 different chimes from about 6 different clocks in my house. It's my alarm clock in the morning, and I almost never don't know what time it is. In every house I've been to so far there has been at least one chiming clock. Most of them have a Western theme, like the main one in my house is a Peanuts Gang clock, and there's one that plays Greensleeves.

Alright, I can't think of anything else, that's a pretty big list I've been compiling over the past few days. I love and miss you all, I know your prayers have been going through, because I have been having an amazing time!

Love, Dakota ダコタ