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When I travel overseas I usually don't eat the local food, with the big
exception of the fruit, which I have a special fascination for.
I mostly travel in third world type countries which aren't famous for great
or safe cuisine, so normally I seek out an acceptable Chinese restaurant
and do most of my eating there. However, I didn't hesitate
to make an exception to this policy this time, because the quality of hygiene
in
Japanese restaurants is high
(apart from periodic mass food poisoning, and people being killed eating
"fugu") and it's an extra effort to eat Western style. I had
no problem eating cold rice and fish bento (boxed meal) for breakfast,
and going to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant with my cousin and his girlfriend
was on my "must do" list. Even supermarket
shopping in Japan is an interesting experience.
All of this discussion of food and drink brings us quite naturally, unashamedly
and irrevocably to the subject of toilets. For some reason
buried deep in our psyches and linked, no doubt, to our early potty training,
people imagine that the way "we" do toilets must be the way everyone around
the world does them. So if you haven't travelled overseas then
you almost certainly have no idea what variety of toilet designs exist
around the planet. On this page of Japanese
toilets you'll get an introduction to this exciting and noble topic
and learn a few essentials of etiquette and culture which might save you
some embarassment.
As you might have gathered, I visited Japan because of my cousin, who has
been teaching English there for some years. However, despite
the best efforts of him and many others like him, and despite the fact
that English is compulsory for five or six years of every Japanese student's
life, the great majority of Japanese remain almost totally unable to string
together a meaningful English sentence. I was very surprised
by how few people even in Tokyo and other major cities were able to communicate
with me, though there were notable exceptions. Thankfully there
are usually enough signs and directions in English to get by, and people
are almost invariably very friendly and do their best to understand.
Twenty years ago, most English speakers had direct experience of how poor
the Japanese were at foreign languages, thanks to appalingly badly written
user manuals for Japanese products. Admittedly, the quality
of these manuals is now greatly improved, perhaps because the Japanese
now hire English writers or copy readers. However, examples
of hilarious mistranslations and mis-spellings
still abound for visitors to Japan. Strangely enough, some
of the funniest uses of English occur simply because it's fashionable to
say things in English, much as French is sometimes used outside France
because it adds an air of romance. The result in Japan
are ridiculously meaningless signs
which use a lot of fancy English words to say nothing, but say it very
nicely. |
