Early impressions (6)

Every day in Japan there are 10001 things that are different from Australia. It's impossible to register them all, and before long you don't notice them at all. But there are just so many. I mean, just talking about the five minute walk to the train station makes me think of lots of things that are different from home.

There are vending machines everywhere; I pass at least eight on my short walk to the station. They sell both hot and cold drinks, in the same machine. It might sound strange to buy a bottle of hot green tea, or a hot can of cafe latte. But I've done it more than once. Around train stations, the vending machines often have sensors so that you can use your train pass to purchase drinks.

Now these train passes are really pretty cool. You buy a card and put credit on it, and it saves you buying tickets every time you use a train. You just touch it to the ticket gate - you don't even have to remove it from your wallet, 'cos the ticket gate can sense the pass through your wallet. They work on multiple train lines, and you can also set them as a commuter pass.

Back to vending machines... a lot of them sell cigarettes. Under 20s are not supposed to buy them (the age of adulthood is 20 in Japan) - but of course there is no regulation whatsoever in place to prevent 12-year-olds buying cigarettes if they so choose. Japan is actually a smoker's heaven, and the cigarettes are also relatively cheap. It's rare to find a cafe where you can't smoke at all. Usually there is a smoking and non-smoking section, but several times I have had to drink my coffee while inhaling smoke. You get used to it, I guess... I've also seen 'smoker's rooms' around the place, which always looks pretty funny to me. There's one right outside Yokohama station, it reminds me of a glass aquarium where the exhibit animals are cigarette smokers, haha...

On the way to or from the train station, you might choose to avail yourself of one of the ubiquitious 'conbeni' (convenience stores). Convenience stores are like mini supermarkets. You can pay bills there - bills arrive at your address with barcodes on them, you just take them into your local conbeni and pay them, it takes all of twenty seconds. I pay all my utility bills, my mobile phone bill, my upcoming Internet bill, etc... recently I bought an airfare (to Sapporo) and was given the option of paying at a convenience store...

Japan really is a cash-based society. People don't use credit cards that often, and when you see, for example, their bill-paying system, you can understand why. I guess it's also a very safe society, so it's safer to carry around more money. I've heard a few people mention losing wallets and having had them returned.

Just looking around a simple convenience store will yield many things unrecognisable to Western eyes. There are lots of bento - boxes of cutely packaged, various Japanese foods - and lots of other little pre-packaged foods. Sometimes I buy a pack of cooked rice, and they'll heat it for you.

There are the usual things you would find in Western convenience stores... cheese, drinks, chips and chocolate, a bakery section... Every time I see the so-called 'bakery' section of my conbeni, I think of something my friends did before I left Australia. As a joke, we all brought the worst and funniest food items we could find - the kind of thing you see in a supermarket and think 'who BUYS that?!' I tell you what, I would win that competition with the contents of the conbeni bakery section. I will be the disgusting food QUEEN! I mean, they have strawberry sandwiches. With actual strawberries and cream smushed in there. But the 'sandwich' bread doesn't even look like bread. I can't describe it...

There's a small section selling money envelopes; they're quite distinctive-looking and have little ribbon threads on them. In Japanese culture, if you give anything, the wrapping is important, and I guess so is discretion. So if you give a gift, it's always wrapped in a nice way. If you give money, it's always in an envelope. For example, I will pay my shamisen teacher by putting money in an envelope. I bought blank envelopes though; for all I know, the ones with writing on them say 'condolences on your loss' or 'congratulations on your wedding'...

There's also a section of comic books. Lots of people read manga (Japanese comics) in Japan, including adults. You often see businessmen reading them on trains; there's no stigma of them being 'for children' (though of course there are lots of manga produced for children). There also seem to be quite a few girly magazines (as in, soft porn) in the conbeni. Sometimes I'm slightly disturbed by the covers of various manga magazines and girly magazines - lots of pictures of girls bursting out of skimpy tops. I've heard that porn is popular and not that stigmatised in Japan. I know I've unwittingly stumbled across it in various unexpected stores and places, though fortunately never anything hard-core.

Anyway, obviously not all the manga and magazines in conbeni are porn, I just can't help noticing those that are, they kind of draw the attention. -_- In Japan, it's normal for people in bookstores to stand and browse the books. It's quite funny to go into a bookstore and see thirty or forty people all standing holding magazines, for example. In Australia, if you did that, surely someone would tell you 'this is not a library'.. hahah...

What else... there are so many different things, just on one street. The garbage system. Confusing, with different types of garbage being collected almost every day of the week. There are posters on lamp posts announcing the days of collection. Garbage has to be tied up in transparent plastic bags so they can see that you are throwing out the right type of garbage. Garbage usually ends up in masses of plastic bags, bound by nets, tied to signposts on the street.

Lots of the small, locally owned shops, seem a lot smaller than any stores in Australia.

Coffee shops. Coffee is very popular in Japan. But coffee shops and cafes are not the same thing, and I have learned to read the signs. There are several places selling coffee on my way to the train station, but I will only drink lattes or cappuccinos. (There are no such things as 'flat whites' here.) This is because Japanese coffee tends to be Strong Espresso. You can get it with milk, but then it becomes Strong Espresso With A Teaspoon Of UHF Crema. Like, I had a coffee at Subway once and couldn't quite believe what came out of the machine. Imagine drinking four or five shots of espresso in one cup. It was horrifying!

Anyway, quite a few places do have cappuccinos and lattes - though there are plenty of coffee shops that don't. Cappuccinos are interesting, as you never know exactly what it will be... sometimes they come topped with chocolate, sometimes with cinnamon, and sometimes with nothing at all. Often with lattes and cappuccinos, I find the froth to be a bit too foamy and bubbly for my taste (okay, I'm a sad, over-fussy coffee snob) so my favourite has become (guiltily...) Starbucks. Starbucks coffees here seem to be a little smaller and stronger than in Oz, so they're much nicer, and have a good consistency of froth. In my defense, though I may patronise Starbucks almost every day, I have at least tried cappuccinos at virtually every possible cafe and fast food restaurant in the area...

Cafes also have a wide variety of other drinks, most of them look sickly sweet, things like 'creme brulee lattes' and 'caramel cream lattes'. I have never seen a Japanese person order a cappuccino or cafe latte at a cafe - it's always strong black coffee, or one of the sickly-sweet conconctions.

One non-coffee drink I am quite partial is the matcha latte. (Matcha is the really traditional Japanese green tea - the kind they do 'tea ceremony' with. It is thick and dark green, slightly bitter, and looks foamy, like soap bubbles. I don't like the taste as much as 'ordinary' green tea, but it's okay.) Matcha lattes are pretty good! It comes with cream, so it's like drinking a hot cocoa... except it's matcha... hmmm...