breezy and clear
It’s a beautiful day, too beautiful to bitch. Besides, some guy giving a lecture apparently said that as a short-term visitor to Japan, I spend way too much time objectifying, exoticizing and otherwise demonizing as a would-be expert on Japan. Well maybe, but it’s mostly self-preservation okay?
Anyway, I come to you today with the following thought; how about we talk about what Japan does right, with minimal snarking for a change?
First off, spring. You can’t not love the gorgeous delicate ume and sakura trees, they tend to make me sneeze a little but I wish they wouldn’t, because they are the romantic centerpiece of truly beautiful spring days.
Seasons are kind of cheating, though…so how about the beautiful houses that invite in the spring? The whole prefecture is full of little villages by the sea, and from the train along the coast you can see shiny ceramic tile roofs by the sea, mostly black but occasionally blue or sea-green, like fish scales.
A traditional Japanese house (and even my apartment) has a tatami (woven-straw-mat) floor in at least one room. It is soft to walk on, comfortable to sit on, warm in the winter and cool in the summer. To complement the floor, rice paper screen doors and windows which glow coolly in the day but keep out the direct sunlight.
More important, if you ask me, is the bathroom. I’m not a big fan of squat toilets, luckily they were out of style by the time they built my place. The deep ofuro hip-bath, coveted by some, is not something I’m particularly attached to but I long for the ultimate luxury item: a heated toilet seat. Someone messed up and forgot to invent them back home.
How long can a house last without the guidelines for living in it? To protect wood floors, delicate tatami, clean rugs and the sanity of the floor-washer, Japanese people take their shoes off in the house. I myself am a self-proclaimed shoe nazi, agreeably and without regret, from even before Japan. I don’t want to walk barefoot on what you tracked in from outside. I don’t want to sweep the floor every day. Take them off.
Something else I’ve noticed here is that people are careful with their stuff. At home I always thought clumsy or graceful was a personality trait, but I’ve come to believe this is actually the result of cultural training. People are taught to be good with their hands.
I observed a cooking class here at school and was astonished–there aren’t messy cooks, things don’t get everywhere, it’s almost weirdly clean. The specifications of procedures taught in cooking class are exacting, with quizzes in areas such as timed daikon chopping, graded for quantity and precision. They are teaching not only the ingredients and procedure, but the techniques for minimal waste and mess.
This somehow translates into an ingrained lack of trouble with being neat and clean in other areas of life, the opposite of most people I know back home. I think our messy Western houses must seem sprawling and dirty by comparison.
As far as travel is concerned, long-distance buses are the way to go. You get your own island seat and you don’t have to share an armrest. They recline and have footrests, and are half the price of trains and faster. Need I say more?
Well, time runs short. All this talk of spring and travel reminds me that tomorrow is the beginning of spring break, and my long-awaited vacation. And on that note, I’m off and away for the next two weeks or so, so have a good one and I’ll catch you on the flip side!
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