Short Japan Observations

A few general observations from three weeks on vacation in Japan, in no particular order:

  • Thirteen hours is a long goddamn time to spend on a plane.

  • The Japanese can and will pickle damn near anything.
  • The Japanese love paper. This is not an exotic-art-of-origami reference, either: every commercial transaction in the country generates at least two pieces of paper, often with multiple stamps applied to them.
  • They also love packaging. If I didn’t remember to tell her that it was ok to put all the croissants in the same bag, the clerk at the bakery in Yokohama would individually wrap each of the three or four croissants in my take-out breakfast order.
  • An astonishing number of people in Japan are paid to stand around waiting for somebody to want something. The Royal Park Hotel employed a small army of bellhops to hang around the lobby waiting for a guest to wander in looking for something. After a while, when I went to drop off the (single, physical) room key in the morning, it became a game to see how close I could get to the front desk before somebody intercepted me and took the key.
  • I am too old to sleep on the goddamn floor.
  • That said, the sleeping on the floor thing probably explains both the national obsession with really hot baths, and the historical tendency toward an ill-tempered warrior class wandering around the country killing people.
  • Thirteen hours is a long goddamn time to spend in an airplane.