30th July

I’ve been here 5 days, so here are some general observations about Japan:

* Newsreaders bow to the camera. Sometimes they really over-do it. Once someone disappeared out of shot

* There are no flies, mosquitoes, bees or wasps. Hurrah.

* Pedestrian crossings take ages to go green.

* Every other shop is an eaterie. I don’t know how they all survive. In England, the competition from the big chains (Pret, Café Uno) would have wiped these out. Here they appear to outnumber them.

* Cars obey all road traffic laws to the letter.

* Bikes on the other hand are traffics anarchists – ride the wrong way down the street, cross on red lights, and often find themselves on collision course with other bikes swerving violently across the road. Mental oriental. Literally.


*In fast food shops (McD, KFC etc), when you take your tray to the rubbish bin, you have to start rummaging through your crap, separating out all the plastic, card, ice, food, paper and put them in separate bins.

I got so confused in KFC that the bored teenager behind the counter looked at me as if to say “Never mind. Just leave it – I’ll do it”

* English appears to be insidiously creeping into common parlance here. Though adverts are in Japanese – the final tagline or slogan is often in English.

Similarly any bargains, for example will still contain: “15% off” alongside the Japanese alphabet.

* Japanese TV is fond of captions. Not one minute goes by without a string of puffy, gaudy characters popping up, scrolling across, or sliding in from the bottom right. They are usually electric blue, bubblegum pink, luminous green or canary yellow


* Japanese people are immaculately turned out. I haven’t seen one unpolished shirt or unironed shoe. Some even appear to have measured their hair with a set square.