I'm on the last day of a week long business trip to Japan.  The first half was in Osaka and the second half is in Tokyo.

Allow me to share my observations of this fascinating society.

1)  Most people are extremely fit.  99.9% or greater of the people I saw while exploring were slender/fit.  It was a struggle to even find someone we in the states would classify as "average".

2)  Japanese life must consist of just walking, eating, shopping and riding the trains.

3)  Trains and train stations are at 125% capacity 24/7/365.

4)  Old toys never die out.  I saw toys in Yodabashi-Udema (Osaka) that were from when I was a youngster (late 1970s and early 1980s).  Where in the US states can you find Gen 1 Transformers on the shelf?

5)  Drab colors are in.  You wear black, dark blue or gray.  Especially if you're male.

6)  If you're a male, you suck unless you wear a black or dark blue suit.  This includes ties.  If you aren't wearing a suit, then you're probably under age 18.

7)  Kids ride the trains without their parents.  Normally this seems to be going to/from school.

8)  Everyone is extremely polite, almost to a fault.

9)  The food is incredible here, but they serve small portions –– probably part of why the people are so slender.  Their culture is just small portions.  My glass of water in most restaurants was 6oz or less.

10) Efficiency is the rule here.  The sushi bar I ate at today tallied up the food bill by scanning plates that have RFID in them to prepare the receipt.

11) The teeth hygiene is on par with or worse than the British.

12) Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, Android OS phone) don't seem to be as popular here, almost everyone had a flip phone.

13) The ninja are everywhere here.  Many Japanese wear surgical masks in public.  This is actually a courtesy done for others because if YOU are sick, you are the one to wear the mask.  There's the rare paranoid person, but normally it is the sick person who wears a mask.

14) Everyone is always going somewhere.

15) Knowing the trains is more important than knowing your own name.

16) So many people dress extremely well.  Even the youth.  I can't remember seeing saggy/baggy pants on a single person.

17) Japan is actually Hoth.  Half the people wear winter coats similar to Han Solo's from Empire Strikes Back.  You know, the ones with the fur on the hoodie

18) The women here are FUCKING STUNNING (unless they are the bad teeth hygiene ones).
   a) They have fantastic legs and like showing their legs off, even in 40F temperatures.
   b) The women love wearing high heels or knee high (or higher) boots.
   c) The women wear stockings and will wear short shorts or short skirts.  To die for.
   d) Due to all the walking and climbing stairs/escalators, many have really great asses.
   e) They are very feminine, girlie type, not liberated bitch like we have in the USA.
   f) Many of the women like to dye their natural black hair to a brown tint.  Looks great on most of them.
   g) Some of the women come up with great ways of wearing their makeup and enhance their sexiness ten fold.
   h) There seems to be a lot more women out and about than men.
   i)  The women do like to shop, apparently.  I almost always saw a store shopping bag in tow.

19) Sadly, great boobs were difficult to find.  In fact, I don't think I ever saw anything approaching a 'C' cup.

20) Everyone seems to take a great deal of pride in what they do.  Even the [attractive] women who clean hotel rooms.

21) I never saw a single bum or street person.

22) Christmas is front and center here, not shunning like increasingly is the case in the USA.  Sure, it is commercialized, but there trees, lights, Santa, etc, everywhere.

#12

I thought they were the first to have 4G. I'm pretty sure they're a few years a head of us in phone tech.

 

Also, that.

This is far from the truth. I spent most of my time on Okinawa, granted... But I saw no happy or pretty things.



I hate that place. More than Iraq.

#15. True dat!

If you like Japan so much, why don't you marry it? J/K, my mother in law is Japanese. Wife is 1/2 and my son is now 1/4.

#19––



Deceiving boobies are deceiving.....



Must have been the winter apparel....

From the OP's description, the Japan he visited is not a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial society.  No wonder everyone looks the same.

+100



5 months left, not that we're counting...



Rural Japan is very different than the big cities.  I'm glad we don't live in a city, but it would be nice to have a few of the conveniences.  



Japan is a beautiful country, but they have a way of building something very distracting that totally ruins the view.  They usually build it out of concrete.



I do get a kick out of the Japanese girls and the way they dress though.  It is pretty funny to see the high heels and short skirts, in the winter, on the top of a mountain you just hiked.  I think the saying goes "I never knew I had an Asian fetish before".



And those flip phones, have TV receivers in them.



And as far as the good food goes, don't look in the kitchen.
 

I've said this many times, and I'll say it again: "ASIAN CHICKS, YOU CAN'T EAT JUST ONE!!!!!!"

+ 1 on the pics

It is also interesting to see the effects of 10 years of a bad economy.



You will see things like abandoned buildings, resorts, restaurants,  facilities at parks and beaches boarded up, and rust everywhere (guardrails, handrails, posts, bridges).

No bums and fatties? Works for me...

I spent ten days in Tokyo and had and absolute blast.
I'd go back in a second.
China was a complete shithole tho

I have had several people (online and IRL) tell me that Japan is one of the most blatantly racist countries you will find.

Not everywhere certainly––but if you get a bit off the tourist circuit you will see it often.

Usually the way you get refused service is they say "I don't speak English".
Even if you speak Japanese, all they will keep saying is "I don't speak English" and they will refuse to wait on you or speak to you otherwise.
~

when I was a young lad in Japan (about 15) I remember two things about the place (I was in Osaka):

The women are amazingly gorgeous...and classy...not borderline-white-trash sluts we have here.

And the place is CLEAN.

Tokyo has plenty of big tits AND bums. You just need to know where to look for both.

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I lived in Japan for a couple of years. It wasn't the utopia you describe. I saw many contradictions to all of your examples. You need to spend some more time there to really get to know the place. It's nice, but far from flawless.

Note they have had a stagnante decade (or more) economically.





Did you see the TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE™ all around you? Did the people that didn't store garagefull of rice buckets die off?





Or did people just seem to be living their lives?
BTW, the politness and innocence is a facade. Get a Japanese behind closed doors and all kinds of wierd shit starts happening.
Did you get a chance to see a Japanese person talking on the phone with their parent or boss?  They will look down and bow as they are talking just like if they were in person with them.

Most love Americans and our culture.  They are VERY racist to other Asians however.

Back my ore

This.

I want a Japanese chick.

1) Most people are extremely fit. 99.9% or greater of the people I saw while exploring were slender/fit. It was a struggle to even find someone we in the states would classify as "average".



Very interesting post about Japanese culture and the people. Do the Japanese smoke,or is that just a myth. I've always heard many were heavy smokers, of course I realize their diet and the fact that being asian has a lot to do with their body size, but does smoking figure into that. Just curious.

I spent a full week in Tokyo last year on business and have to agree with everything the OP said.
The other haters are going to hate.
Who cares if they are racist?  Its their country.  I didnt find any of that and I met some very nice business people who took great pride in taking us out every night and showing us the best time possible.
About the women, I never saw so many beautiful women in my life.  The vast majority of American women couldnt begin to compare.
The thing that really struck me, in comparison to the states, everything was clean, everything seemed to run very efficiently, people dressed neatly and professionally, everyone was polite to me and they seemed intelligent.

You Sir, must not have been in Hong Kong.  I can barely remember the week in HK, good thing I took pics

Yeah Okifuckinowhere is a shit hole. I hated that fuckin Island.

In before your gang raped by the "It's not mainland Japan, it's different and Japan is so special and thrilling gone native leg humpers."

The only good thing about Okinawa was the Angry chef out the gate that cooked the best stir fry.

Okniawa IS NOT mainland Japan.
Not even close.  Even the Japanese don't really consider it "Japan".
Okinawa has been diluted by places like the Philippines.

The OP is right on, though I have seen bums in Japan in the train stations and parks.
In the train stations the police roust them fairly quickly.  In the parks they have little tent cities built up off the beaten path away from the regulars.
I never saw a bum aggressively panhandling in the 4 years I was there.

I'd say the people have good oral hygeine, but poor orthodonture.  Although that is changing.  You see a lot of even 30 somethings with braces.

The masses wear the dark suits.  if you see someone in a grey suit, it is usually a higher ranking exec.  Kind of a color coding system.

Lear just a little bit of the language and the people really open up to you.  
They are perfectionists and are embarrassed if they do no tspeak perfect English.
If you embarass yourself, because you are definitely going to speak worse Japanese than their English, they will start conversing in English with you.

Fucking fantastic place a must see for everybody at least once in their lives.

18) The women here are FUCKING STUNNING (unless they are the bad teeth hygiene ones).
   a) They have fantastic legs and like showing their legs off, even in 40F temperatures.
   b) The women love wearing high heels or knee high (or higher) boots.
   c) The women wear stockings and will wear short shorts or short skirts.  To die for.
   d) Due to all the walking and climbing stairs/escalators, many have really great asses.
   e) They are very feminine, girlie type, not liberated bitch like we have in the USA.
   f) Many of the women like to die their natural black hair to a brown tint.  Looks great on most of them.
   g) Some of the women come up with great ways of wearing their makeup and enhance their sexiness ten fold.
   h) There seems to be a lot more women out and about than men.
   i)  The women do like to shop, apparently.  I almost always saw a store shopping bag in tow.



j)  Their tiny little hands make your cock look HUGE.

I've noticed a lot of this from the Japanese international students on campus. They wear huge, bulky, shiny black coats with fur. It's kinda amusing.

then you really never saw Okinawa there is so much to do there, but if you stay on base  then you will see nothing,so many hot women from the main land go to Okinawa,you got to hit the beach's,one thing dont act like a GRUNT when you are there.and stay a way from American bars and bar girls.

I DID WIFE JAPANESE LIVED THERE FOR A FEW YEARS AND LOVED IT

I was in Japan 2 years ago.  Nagoya was decorated to the 9's with Christmas decorations.  The signs on the streetlights said "Happy Merry Christmas"  

One item that really summarizes their dress culture is you could stand the average taxi driver next to a CEO and as an American, you wouldn't be able to quickly distinguish between the two.

I had the good fortune to visit Sasebo and Nagasaki, I actually enjoyed it very much. A modern country and is a nice change from places like the PI.

Did you see Colonel Sanders dressed as Santa in front of Kentucky Fried Chicken (near Shiodome if I recall correctly)?  They love that stuff.  




PS I hear ya on the teeth thing ... my uncle (who is not Japanese) has a dental practice in Tokyo and he makes $$$.

Meh, that's true for most Oriental (not Asian) societies.  They tend to be xenophobic by nature.

PS I am not saying that the United States is not xenophobic or racist either.  In my eyes everyone is a racist, whether they admit it or not.  People are visual creatures and we automatically judge others by what we see.  We may not always associate negative connotations to certain races but everybody makes assessments based on skin color.  

I was stationed in Yokosuka Japan for a little more than 3 years. Best time of my life!!! The people there are awesome! The culture is amazing!!!

#8 Some of the nicest people in the world! Even if they didn't like Gaijins (foreigners) they would just cross their arms in an "x" in front of them and say "no". We would just say sorry and turn and walk out of their business.  Usually that happened in Japanese bars around base. We had an area called "The Honch" They were mostly bars that were all kinds of beat the fuck up from Americans and the other bars that were around the Honch that were Japanese only were really extremely nice inside. If you learned the language or at least tried it made a difference.

#12 To hit on the cell phones they are still much better than ours. The major cell phone provider was and I believe still is Do Co Mo. Check out their website. I remember coming home on leave at the end of 1999 and my phone had a color screen, texting, email, internet and a few other cool tricks. I took it to a cell phone store here while a friend was buying a new cell and showed it to the staff and they were blown away with what it could do.

#13. Another reason they do that is because people don't call out sick like they do here. I remember my girlfriend going to work with a 103 temp and shivering so bad she could hardly stand. But she was expected to be at work... and she was.

I will make it back to Japan someday for a visit.

They must dress the same way as Koreans then. The Korean women were just beautiful, and they liked to party till 6am  

On top of that they loved Americans because they are some what gold diggers and think we all have a lot of money.  I'd go out on a date and pay for the dinner and it was around $30 US which by my standards isn't bad and they were so impressed.  Kind of amusing actually

Yep - Oki ain't like the real thing.

The coolest thing I got to do while in the Marines was getting sent to the Japanese Groud Self-defense Force as something of an exchange student.  Lived in their baracks near Osaka, their chow, bathouses, etc.  I really came to love and respect the culture - racist as hell, considered themselves to be superior to everyone - especially other Asians.  Travelling around Asia I tended to agree with them.

PS OP, I am surprised you didn't mention the pure win that is beer from vending machines.  

Japan as a nation exists for the Japanese people. I don't understand why that's bad.

Oh yeah... Anybody use a tradional Japanese "toilet" while they were there? Now that is an experience!!!!

ETA...

OP's impression of Japan mirrors my own.  I would love to go back.

I would have thought by now that the digital camera would have made its way to Japan.



Apparently not!!!!

Sounds a lot like Europe, only with a work ethic. And without the graffiti.

#23.  The taxis are the CLEANEST I've ever seen.  Cars in the USA aren't even that clean when they are in the dealer's showroom.  And they have a perfect starched white sheet on the backseat.

#24.  Thievery is almost nonexistent.  I lost a very expensive pair of Oakley sunglasses in a train station that must have ad 3.2 million people in it.  When I approached  guard, he smiled and pointed to the sunglasses that    
         someone had placed on a guardrail, completely in plain sight.  In the USA those sunglasses wouldn't have lasted 8 seconds out in he open.

#25.  VERY neat and organized.  When we visited some kind of religious shrine and were asked to remove our shoes, there were little parking spots painted on the ground to "park" our shoes in a neat, attractive organized
        fashion.  In the airport immigration line, which was very long, there was a guy whose job it was to make sure the lines were single file, neat and straight.

#26.  Personnel space is VERY small, especially on the trains, and they like to push and shove.  Initially I was taken back by people shoving me.  Then I got into it.  If they want to push.....I CAN PUSH HARDER.  At 6'4" , and    
        235 pounds of quivering American muscle I could move some 5'   110 pound Japanese folks........My wife would tuck in behind me and I would PLOW through the crowd.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I like Japan. A lot.

I'm glad we are buddies now. Nice people nowadays.

I wish they hadn't earned a double nuking, but hey.

I hear the hot girls are into octopus over there.