Ten Things About Japan

The Land Where What is Lost is Always Found

Dear Global Jigsaw,

In today’s post, my top ten things to know about Japan. For those who have already been, let me know what else you might have added.

To arrive in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, can be a sensorially confounding

experience. It is a city of some 30 million people, with troops of skyscrapers

stampeding across it, often draped in hyper-realistic digital screens that shine like

constellations of capitalism come down to earth. But there is also a hush at the heart

of the city’s great shrines and temples, where swirls of incense spiral in dreamlike

shapes. Having lived in Japan for four years, here are my top ten tips on how best to

navigate the country; what to notice and what to know.

1. Cash is king: In the popular imagination, Japan is a high-tech conurbation of

robots and gadgets. But in reality, living there can feel like being stuck in the

1980s, when fax machines were haute-tech and neon passed for cutting-edge.

The country got rid of floppy disks to complete government procedures only

about a year ago. Opening bank accounts and making digital payments remains

surprisingly difficult, and many restaurants and shops only accept cash.

Switzerland based IMD’s World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, put Japan at

31 out of 67 countries, far behind China which came in at #14. It pays to always

keep some cash handy.

2. What is lost is invariably found: The level of social honesty in Japan is truly

inspiring, Between the four members of my family, we lost wallets, lunch boxes,

phones, jackets, metro passes and a laptop. We recovered every single item,

sometimes within hours. Not a sterling recommendation for our family’s personal

habits, but a ringing endorsement of Japan. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan

Police Department’s “Acceptance Status of Notification of Found Items and

Notifications of Lost Items,” conscientious finders handed over more than 4.4

million lost items to police in 2023. The number of found objects handed in was

about four times the number of missing item complaints filed. And it isn’t just

umbrellas being handing in, although there were an awful lot of these, but even

hard cash. Across Japan there is an 87.5 percent chance of finding lost money, a

number calculated based on complaints received by the police against found

hand ins. In 2023, 4.4 billion yen in cash was returned to owners.

Retrieving the wallet I lost in my first week in Japan, from the police station.

3. Garbage disposal is serious business: Japan’s garbage recycling system is

truly operatic in scale and complexity. Legislation dating to the late 1990s

mandates that every household has to separate waste into burnable and non-

burnable categories. But this is just the tip of the recycling iceberg. There is a

vertiginous array of categories to further sort non-burnable into plastic and PET

(polyethylene terephthalate), cardboard and glass, spray cans, and old cloth. The

municipality I had lived in issued residents with an Iliad-sized manual on how to

sort some 500 different items. For example: lipstick was usually “burnable”, but

an empty tube went into “small metals”. If the trash is sorted incorrectly, it is not

collected. Instead, a large red sticker is pasted prominently on the bags, leaving

the miscreant crushed under the weight of neighborhood social shame.

4. The rail infrastructure is world-beating. Trains in Japan are almost

supernaturally on time. One of my favorite anecdotes is an incident in November

2017 when an express line between Tokyo and the city of Tsukuba departed 20

seconds early, at 9:44:20 AM instead of 9:44:40 AM. The line’s management

issued a “sincere” apology “confessing” that the crew had not “sufficiently

checked the departure time. High speed trains or Shinkansen are so efficient that

Harvard Business school has done a case study on them. The trains are fully

cleaned after each trip in exactly seven minutes, a routine that is as precisely

calibrated as an Olympic synchronized swim squad.

5. Make friends with vending machines: There is hardly a square meter of the

archipelago that is unadorned by vending machines. Even the remotest roads on

desolate mountain slopes inevitably feature one, often half-buried under snow,

but always functional, dispensing barley tea at the press of a button. According to

the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association, there is about one

machine for every 35 citizens. And although the majority of these are drink and

snack dispensers, there are others that spit out products not typically associated

with vending machines. You can get bananas, piping-hot soup, comic books,

umbrellas and even saké at the right machines. Or phone chargers. Or surgical

masks. Or your future. At some Shinto shrines, vending machines offer omikuji,

or random fortunes written on strips of paper for a few hundred yen.

6. Join a Dojo: It can be hard to make local friends in Japan. There is the language

barrier, and a natural shyness that many Japanese have around foreigners. Most

locals live in small apartments which further deters them from inviting people to

their homes. Joining a dojo is the best chance for an outsider to “go local.” A dojo

is a place where people train in a traditional Japanese practice. It can be a

martial art like aikido or kendo, or as in my case, taiko (Japanese drumming). A

dojo offers more than a space to perfect an art. It also serves up a community.

The word itself means “place of the way,” from “do” (the path or way) and “jo”

(place), hinting at something deeper than just physical practice. Fellow dojo

members owe each other a quiet loyalty, and joining one offers a glimpse of local

life that is not available to the average expatriate.

7. Brush up on chopstick etiquette: Even if you are already a dab hand at eating

with chopsticks, you should brush up on the finer points of the etiquette around

eating with these in Japan. It is not as easy as dig in. Here is a quick primer:

Eat all the food at the end of your chopsticks in one bite. Never raise your food

above your mouth. When not eating, put down your chopsticks on the supplied

rest, or on the side of the plate. Never leave your chopsticks sticking out of your

rice, as this resembles a Japanese funeral offering. Finally, don’t lick the ends of

your chopsticks or swirl them in soup.

8. Turn down the volume: In Japan, talking loudly in public spaces, whether on a

mobile phone or with friends, is frowned upon in general, as it encroaches on the

aural space of others – a notion entirely unknown in many other parts of the

world. This includes all public transport. Even during rush-hour when the Tokyo

metro is jam-packed without an inch of space for anyone to move, there is a

hushed silence within the cabins. Nothing screams “ugly foreigner” more than a

loudmouth.

9. Expect beauty in unexpected places: Think Japanese aesthetics and it is

cherry blossoms or landscaped gardens that come to mind. But the longer I lived

in the country the less time I spent training my eyes up at skylines and flowers

and more looking down at the roads, trying to spot manholes. In Japan, the lowly

manhole is its own art form with covers displaying intricate, occasionally painted,

designs that reveal something of the unique history or cultural traditions of the

cities whose sewers they adorn. The standard covers in Tokyo, for example,

display cherry blossom petals, while in Osaka, the city castle is the dominant

motif. Port cities display lighthouses and ocean scenes, fishing villages feature

fish. Elements of local festivals like lanterns or certain foods are also common.

According to the Japan Society of Manhole Covers (yes, there is such a thing),

which maintains an online directory of designs, there are almost 6000 artistic

manhole covers spread across the country with trees, landscapes, flowers and

birds accounting for the majority. 

Manhole cover in Japan. Pic credit: Pallavi Aiyar

10. The 100-yen store can supply all of life’s needs: Japan is notorious for

expensive real estate. But one way to cut down on the cost of living is to find your

local 100-yen store. These tiny, crammed and endlessly inventive stores are the

real economic engine of Japanese cities. The stores do exactly what they

advertise: sell almost everything on their heaving shelves for 100 yen (plus a few

extra yen for tax) or about a dollar. But they are more than just a place for

cheaply made tat. They are an education, where the shopper will learn about

everything, they never knew they needed but simply can’t do without after

encountering it. Where else can you find a mango pitter, banana-holder, owl-

shaped hardboiled egg-maker, cherry blossom-shaped carrot slicer, USB cables,

origami paper, Halloween masks, glue, hooks, chopsticks, socks, sponges,

butterfly nets, lipstick, fake money, mannequin heads and everything in between?

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Hope you enjoyed this post. It was first published in Escape Artist .

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Until soon, take good care.

Un abrazo,

Pallavi