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| Beautiful Sakura (on Yokota AFB) |
Second in my three-part "series" applauding nations in which I have lived. :) While I'm not getting into State differences, I do want to point out that my Japan experience will likely be completely different than someone who lived on Okinawa, or even Sapporo. We lived on Honshu, in the suburbs of Tokyo, the world's largest city (in population). This is a much shorter list than Germany, but each item is longer... I've not lived there in 6 years, so it's harder to remember the little details.
1. Food, glorious food!! In Tokyo you can get about any kind of food you want, but like the United States Japan has it's own "take" on italian, mexican, etc. Their italian is light and fresh--better in some ways than food in the actual Italy! :) My favorite Pizza Hut (Japan) pizza was the eggplant, and my favorite McDonald's sandwich there was the chicken tatsu--flattened and grilled and covered in fresh cabbage. The teriyaki burger was yummy too. ;) And of course I can't even begin to describe how fantastic the chinese, thai, and japanese food is there... I'm getting hungry just thinking about it, and I just ate lunch!! :)-
2. Public transportation!!! Yes, there are trains in Europe, but we never found them as convenient and NO ONE beats the japanese record for being on time! I'll never forget the time we tried to take a train in to the city during a typhoon (aka hurricane), and they apologized profusely and humbly over the loudspeakers for the train being 5 minutes late because one blew off the tracks... really!!! And of course people walk and bike everywhere around Tokyo too. :)
3. World's best customer service. My husband has been to several dozen Nations and has visited every continent except Antarctica. My Aunt and others I've met have been to just as much or more. I have yet to find a single person who can include Tokyo in their history who does NOT rant and rave about how fantastic the service is there. :) Yes, there are individual places that are great elsewhere, but in greater Tokyo it is everywhere you go, from the humblest drug store to the fanciest hotel. Even most people in the street will bend over backwards to help you if you ask. It's truly amazing, and humbling when you come from an ambivalent place like the U.S. A couple of "only in Japan" examples: the garbage men handscrub each garbage can when they empty it, and the maintenance people (even on the military base) would tell you "we'll be there between 4 and 4:05 tomorrow (yes you read that right--a 5 MINUTE window, not 5 hours or more as elsewhere... and they would actually show up on time, too!!!). A lot of japanese worked on base too, so the on-base services were approximately 50 billion light years better than anyplace we've ever been also. :)- (Warning: may be very slightly exaggerated) LOL
4. Safety. Unless you get on the bad side of the mob (yes, they do have one there), Tokyo is amazingly safe. Random violent crime is almost non-existent, and a theft is huge news that will be talked about for weeks. Yes, this is the world's LARGEST city in the World, and yet statistically I would not be the least bit surprised to learn it is also the safest. We would go to city parks with my twin toddlers and leave cameras, bags, even wallets just sitting on a bench while we chased the boys around. NO ONE steals there--you see this everywhere (people leaving valuable items lying around and no one bothering it). Oddly, the one exception was bicycles, those were always locked up tightly LOL. People from all over the world were talking about how safe it was during the World Cup, I remember, because it was such a surprise to so many from other Nations. :)
5. So much to do and see. This may be a "duh" kind of thing, but being the world's largest city there was a LOT to do. :) Besides cultural and historical things Tokyo also has two wonderful zoos, a Sesame Place, and Disneyland (plus the world's only DisneySEA park!). Some of their city playground/parks were truly wonderful and unique too--one had giant areas of rubber (like a moonwalk) for jumping that the americans called "mushroom mountain." Another had a bizarre giant slide with rubber strips all down it that you went on by sled that the americans called a "spaghetti slide" LOL. The base services were fantastic there too, with horseback riding and camping and fantastic family-friendly and inexpensive bus trips all over the area. It is also designated as an area which qualified for "morale leave" (we never could fathom why, unless it was simple distance from the U.S.), so we could take 2 "hop" trips per year if we wished. We never really took advantage of that, but a lot of people I met did, going shopping in Korea and Singapore, hopping over to the beaches in Guam and Okinawa, etc.
6. Wonderful friendly people. Unlike Germany or the U.S., the japanese are thrilled when you make an effort to learn their language, and they will help you whenever they can, being very patient and kind with your mangling of their words. (The Americans are notorious for shouting at people, of course, and in our experience where we lived most germans would just growl at us and switch to english, refusing to even try to listen to our attempts at german.) Of course my experience is also probably colored by the fact that I was walking around with adorable and VERY blonde twin toddlers (and later preschoolers) during our years there. ;) They would constantly stop us to take their photo, pat them on the heads, etc. The twins were quite disgruntled with the lack of adoration they received in Germany LOL ;)-
7. Not as much living adjustment difficulties as in Europe. I went to public school and learned virtually nothing about Asia, so when we got orders there I felt like I was going to the moon and was really worried!! What a wonderful surprise to learn that almost everyone in Tokyo speaks at least a little english (and will try to help you even when they don't LOL). The signs around Tokyo are usually in "romanji" (roman letters) and not just the 3 asian script sets they use, and in fact a great number of signs were also in english! The electric and video is the same, so no worries about transformers or dual-system TVs, etc.... and the japanese believe in A/C LOL!!! :)- Plus at least when we were there the exchange rate was almost one-to-one, so it wasn't difficult to translate yen to dollars. :) The japanese also love thrift stores and have "100 yen" stores (equivalent to $1), so it wasn't terribly expensive like we expected. Of course it helped that almost everyone lived on base--but my brother lived off base in Yokosuka (south of Tokyo), and so we got to share a bit of his experiences. His biggest adjustment was the japanese concept of size. He and his wife rented a one-bedroom home of perhaps 800 square feet, and all his japanese neighbors were shocked that they would want such a gigantic home with only the two of them!
8. NO tipping!!! Ok, this may be selfish on my part LOL, but I loved loved loved the fact that we didn't have to worry about whom to tip for what and what the percentages were and etc. In Japan tipping is considered an insult, because their honor requires them to do the best job they possibly can already.... to tip would be like saying you are helping them get by while they find a new job, because they really stink at the one they have now!!
9. Being on the opposite side of the planet gives you a nice cushion from family drama. ;)- Ok, it's far... even though I'm trying to keep these all positive, I thought it only fair to mention that small fact. However, it's not all bad. Granted we were very lucky having my brother stationed there at the same time we were, and it does make seeing family a challenge being so far away! But in this day and age we have internet chat and email and facebook, so it's not so bad. And truly, we would often hear about family squabbles after they were completely over and resolved already LOL. And no one gets mad when you say you just can't make it for Christmas this year. ;) Besides, we were a day ahead of everyone else so could tell them that there really is a tomorrow. ;)-
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