Images of Japan

In the ten days we roamed hither and yon in Japan visiting friends and relatives, we came away with several images:
**Nobody ate while walking, driving, sitting on the train, biking.  In fact, eating was a kind of ritual (done at certain times of the day.)  Nobody was fat.

**Public transportation made life accessible.  While there, we only sat in a car twice.  The rest of the time was walking, riding a bike, riding a train.  Even grannies rode their bikes.  The shinkansen was especially impressive, travelling at up to 190 m/hour, arriving halfway across the country in a few hours.

   

**People riding on the train didn’t talk on their cell phones—they switched to “manner mode."  If someone did accidentally get a call, it was amusing to watch.  It looked like some covert operation, as the person spoke with their hands up by their face blocking out the potentially annoying sound of their personal conversation. 

**Almost everywhere we went had directional signs in English, sometimes in Korean, Chinese.  

**Wifi was not everywhere.

**People ran around in yukatas and kimono--a nod to the old--as well as 3-piece suits and dresses.  But NOBODY wore saggers.

**And, although it seems silly to mention, the bathrooms were always a new experience.  The worst ones were the old-fashioned holes in the ground.  The best ones (like at the airport) had several buttons on the side, one button for bidet, one for shower, one for dryer.  At the same time, as soon as you sat down, a recording of rushing water would start up, masking any other sounds.  In these bathrooms, the sinks were also very high tech, with soap dispensing as soon as you put your hands beneath the dispenser, water flowing as soon as you put your hands under the spigot, and the hand dryer turning on as soon as you put your hands in this sideways waffle-iron type machine.  (Something I've only seen at the Tech Museum in San Jose.)