The other day I ate soba noodles for lunch, and I was amused at a sign I saw above my head, which said narubeku kin’en, translatable as “No Smoking As Possible, Please.”
I found it quite amusing for the restaurant owners to ask customers not to smoke “if they can possibly avoid it.” Although smoking […]

What Japan Thinks has a report on an Internet survey about what Japanese people think are the greatest attributes of Japan and the Japanese people.
The top 10 responses. . .
1. A sense of the four seasons
2. Diligence
3. Kindness
4. Rich food culture
5. Ability to create cutting-edge technology
[…]

Straight from the Japanese Make the Best Tourists Department comes a report that students from Gifu City Women’s College are in hot water for defacing the Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy during an overseas study tour by writing the date, their names, and the names of their friends with an oil-based marker […]

A recent survey by online travel company Expedia.com reveals that Japanese tourists are ranked best overall by hoteliers. The Japanese were followed by the Germans and Britons who were tied for second place, followed by the Canadians and Swiss.
The survey ranked American tourists as the most generous, followed by Canadians and Russians, while the French, […]

For some reason, there’s a lot of interesting culture to be found at the porcelain altar, between the seatless Japanese-style toilets that present foreign visitors with their first major culture shock in Japan to those wonderful “Washlet” toilet seats that clean and dry your rear end while you do your business.
Once I went to […]

“It is prohibited to conduct any group demonstration, to carry flags, placards or wear group participation arm bands. It is also prohibited to assemble, hold group meetings, sitdowns, force interview, or use violence on visitors. In addition, the authorization of the management is necessary for the distribution of leaflets or notes, indoor and outdoor photography, […]

Three days into a trip in Japan and my mother and I were sitting in a coffee shop in Kyoto. In came a foreigner (meaning, a white woman) with two kids. I knew they were trouble, the sort of children to whom everything–including bad behavior–is “explained,” which seems to be a trend in child-rearing these […]

CNN has an entertaining and revealing 2-minute video on Tokyo’s lost and found.  In a city of 12-or-so million people, it’s staggering how much gets turned in.  The piece discusses the 130,000 umbrellas, the change in policy of holding items from 6 months to 3 months due to storage issues, and cultural differences between the U.S. and […]

The last time I took my husband to Japan, he was in the middle of training for the New York City marathon. It’s a rather rigorous schedule, involving numerous “short” runs during the week and long runs on the weekend.
I was a little bit nervous about him running around Japan in a pair of […]

On the heels of the other somewhat debated “Changing Mores” post, here is another photo for you Japanophiles to digest.

Now, I’m really, really sure that this is the kind of thing you rarely would have seen twenty years ago. And if I’m wrong, I know Ed will tell me (and so will all of you).

Twenty years ago, this is not really something you would have seen in Japan. Any of you long time Japanophiles notice what makes this photo (taken in Japan) a sample of changing manners and habits?

The Fiji Times recently ran an editorial urging taxi drivers to stop ripping off visitors, immigration officials to stop chewing gum and being so grumpy, and shop assistants to stop their rude hassling of customers. But mostly it encouraged its citizens to refrain from urinating on tourists.
The paper reported that an incident in March last […]