lifeofpri # 9 - The sans and naans in Japan

Sep 18, 2023

There’s a world of difference in how you experience a place as a resident versus tourist. Japan is not one of the countries I’ve lived in, but I feel like I came close.

I’ve spent a few weeks across a couple of trips to Japan 2012 onwards and it definitely felt like I lived there - staying in a tiny apartment, buying groceries, cooking my own food, going to work, cycling around, shopping and doing my own laundry.

This was also when I realised that I really enjoy living on my own and function very differently independently, because up until that point, I’d never really lived anywhere by myself.

There are several things that I found absolutely fascinating about Japan, and I am sure you can find tonnes of YouTubers who basically live off talking about these quirks about Japan. Here are a few videos if you’ve never watched any of them:

Given that there are so many interesting things about Japan, I could write an entire book like Pico Iyer’s A beginner’s guide to Japan. But, for the sake of this newsletter, I’ll just list 25 random observations from my trips:

Travelling from India to Japan takes much longer than I’d ever imagined, despite being on the same continent. It takes just as much time as travelling to America, which is at the other end of the world. Travelling so long, and that too eastwards (I’ve no clue why that makes such a difference), gives you the worst jetlag ever.
People do not slow down at toll-booths, and the barricade at the tolls lifts up a milli second before you pass by. It is scary. I don’t think we’ll be able to live with that level of trust in India. No wonder you can buy everything from a vending machine in Japan, and they are all over the place, absolutely un-manned.
Speaking of trust, I once forgot my wallet in the basket of my bicycle when I went shopping to a mall. I didn’t realise that I’d left my wallet out for almost half an hour, until I was done shopping and about to pay. I freaked out, and immediately ran to the parking lot expecting to have my wallet stolen. My friends kept assuring me that it would be right there, but I thought there were insane to even suggest that. When I got to my cycle, my wallet was right there in the basket, untouched. Wait, people don’t steal in Japan?!
Cabs are expensive in Japan. I mostly used public transport or a cycle to get around, which are all quite reliable. But this once, I took a cab because it was raining heavily. I remember paying a 800 yen for a very short drive (like less than minimum meter in an auto in Bangalore), but the driver was so insanely well-dressed and polite, I felt obliged to not cry over the burn.
I spent most of my time in Aichi prefecture, where the headquarters of Toyota Motor Corporation (where I worked for several years) is. We usually stayed at this company owned dorm/ service apartment called Oasis. I remember the first time I went there - it was late in the night, I’d travelled for nearly 24 hours, I was beyond exhausted. All I wanted was to hit the sack immediately. But no, Oasis doesn’t let you do that. They made me watch a 20-min video about how to behave while I lived there. Actually, I didn’t mind it as much, except, the video also kept explaining how not to live, which was a little excessive. I do see the light of it now that I am not sleep deprived as I write this, but I really wanted to scream while watching it (although I wasn't entirely sure if I could do that because it wasn’t covered in the video). Also, the strange thing about OASIS is that men and women cannot enter each others’ quarters. So, when we got together for meals, we used to actually sneak into each others’ apartments, which was amusing.
Oasis is located in “Toyota-shi” or Toyota city, which is basically a large company town that looks like an extension of the shop floor. Everything is so tidy and orderly, including markings on the streets for where you walk, where you cross, where you cycle, where you stand, where you wait for the bus and what have you. I am obsessive about tidiness, so it really appealed to my sentiments. But I’ll admit, after a while, this drove the Indian in me absolutely nuts - I really started missing the disorder, chaos and rubbish.
If you truly want to understand punctuality, you have to work in Japan. When they say they’re meeting you at 11, they mean 11, not 10:59 or 11:01. Even the trains run exactly on the dot, the level of precision is insane. So, I was really worried about taking the Shinkansen once for a weekend trip to Tokyo since I was worried about missing the train back in time for work on a Monday morning.
I don’t know if it’s a Japanese thing or a manufacturing industry thing, but moving up the corporate ladder is a function of age and experience rather than talent. I remember being in a meeting with this elderly gentleman with whom I was negotiating a hard deal. And no, the hard bit wasn’t doing this in Japanese. It could be the cultural differences, but most of my Indian colleagues believed that you need to conduct business in a certain way with the Japanese. But I had no such baggage. So when I was negotiating, my Indian colleague kept feeling nervous about my ask. But much to his surprise, but barely to mine, we settled on my ask that would help us launch a new model of Corolla in India well in time while saving us money. In the end, he told me that he’d never met anyone as young as me in my function. He said the minimum qualification that most people in this function had was a few strands of grey hair.
It was a great experience being with colleagues from all over the world, meeting people from countries I’d never met and learning about each other and their work. It was bizarre to learn that the Toyota Japanese culture transcended so seamlessly across geographies be it in Indonesia, Pakistan or Brazil.
I don’t know about bigger cities like Tokyo or Kyoto, but in Aichi, people don’t speak English. The first time I was in Japan, I didn’t speak any Japanese. I remember going out for dinner with Punyathat (Bee), a Thai friend, who also didn’t speak any Japanese. Even though the restaurant had picture menus, we had no way of knowing what meats they contained. After a few minutes of struggling to communicate, Bee decided to imitate a chicken by flapping his hands and making bird noises. The waiter immediately understood, and started playing Pictionary with us - he drew a bird on a napkin and we all furiously started nodding and bowing. Thankfully, a few minutes later, we got our fried chicken with salad and rice, and devoured it.
So, after my first trip, I ended up taking classes to learn to read, write and speak Japanese, although I barely remember any of it now without much practice. Also, I feel like my Japanese got overwritten with Spanish. Japanese has three scripts - hiragana, katakana and kanji. Katakana is exclusively used to write foreign words, and Hiragana is used in conjunction with Kanji. So, if you’re well versed with Hiragana and Katakana and a small set of Kanji, you will be able to read conversational Japanese. You don’t really have to bother learning all the 3000 kanji characters to be able to read Japanese fluently. I feel like a lot of Japanese themselves may not actually be as well-versed with all kanji characters because of how rarely some of them are used. But learning the script gives you so much insight into their culture. For instance, you get a sense of how patriarchal their society is from the kanji characters for man and woman - a man is a stick figure next to a paddy field and a woman is a stick figure in a kimono.
As I’ve mentioned before, I really enjoy business trips because you get “taken care” by local colleagues. I’d taken little knick knacks for colleagues there and they’d brought me presents too. But the Japanese take this caring business to another level. Akahira san, a colleague, once drove all the way from Nagoya, picked us up and took us back to Nagoya to give us a tour and dropped us all the way back. I felt so guilty and grateful, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Japanese drink like crazy. The after work parties can be wild. I’ve seen the same vibe even here in Indian with my old Japanese colleagues. They really know how to have a good time, once lubricated with alcohol. It’s no surprise that Japanese Shochu, sake or single malts are as potent as they are. Both hard work and drinking is a big part of their culture. People look down upon men who return home early from work. So, such men end up in mama bars after work. While some others would rather go to a karaoke bar or a pachinko (gaming arcade), depending on whether they’re in the mood to gamble or babble.
I went to a sushi bar once with those conveyor belts ferrying sushis to your table. The tiny plates on which your food sits is colour coded, so when the waiter comes to give you the bill at the end, he/ she just calculates based on colours and numbers. Also, they don’t come to you unless you call them using a calling bell that is placed at your table. You also get complimentary tea on our table for after your meal. I love cultures where avoiding conversation, if possible, is encouraged. May be that’s why I feel so at home in Japan and Britain.
Another time, a Japanese friend, Deguchi san (san is a term of respect used for adults, and chan for children), took me out for a fancy sashimi dinner. I had no idea what I was eating and he obviously didn’t have a large English vocabulary either, so he kept googling and showing me images of the creatures I was consuming (but after I’d eaten). I remember feeling aghast when he showed me a picture of a sea urchin after I’d eaten it because the inside of it looks nothing like the outside. When I was struggling with my implements, I asked him if it would be ok for me to use my hands to pick up my food, and he looked horrified. He probably regretted taking me out, but I guess I’d be equally amused if he ate with a spoon on a banana leaf.
I went to an Indian restaurant once with my Indian colleagues. As I’d said earlier, people outside India equate spice to Indian food, so the name of the restaurant, Spice Express, was unsurprising. The restaurant was adorned with photos of Aishwarya Rai. We ordered one naan for the four of us because naans in Japan are a different breed - they are about 2 ft long.
Every evening when I got back from work, I’d get off the bus and walk to a combini (a convenience store) that sold the most amazing yakitori (grilled chicken skewers). I wish we could have such nutritious conveniently available cheap snacks here in India.
Hospitality in Japan is at another level. People really go out of their way to help you. I once went to a liquor store looking for a bottle of Umeshu, the local plum wine (super delicious), and the man at the store was so apologetic about not stocking Umeshu in his store that he walked me to a store where I could find it.
I once went to a market in Osu Kannon in Nagoya prefecture, which was quite an experience. They sold the most bizarre stuff, including kinky costumes for children - colourful wigs, glittery brasseries and things like that. I knew that Japanese had some pretty unique fetishes, but this was really something.
There are these Sunday markets in town where you can buy lots of things for home at dirt cheap prizes. I’ve these super precious looking Japanese rice bowls that I bought for 20 yen each, the economics of it makes no sense.
Japan can get insanely cold, it’s not something I’d expected. So, the first time I was there, I hadn’t packed appropriately, and I remember getting frost bites on my feet since I was wearing sandals on a cold night.
I was once in Japan during the Sakura (cherry blossom) season, which is usually around March-April. It’s a really beautiful time in Japan, and people usually go out for picnics in the park during this season. There are also some specific desserts that people enjoy during this season - Sakuramochi, Taiyaki, etc. Most of these snacks are filled with red bean paste, which I absolutely loathe. I think the rest of East Asia takes inspiration from Japanese desserts because you see variants of all these desserts in other countries too.
But not all desserts are filled with bean paste. You get these incredibly delicious ice-cream chocolates in Japan called Nama by Royce. Their chiffon cakes are to die for. I’ve never eaten such soft and fluffy cakes anywhere else in world.
In general, Japan has a very wide variety of snacks or packaged foods. They manage to dry out every creature on the planet and turn it into a snack. Without a cartoon drawn out on the pack, it’s really hard to know what you are eating, because it’s all in Japanese. It’s especially adventurous when you’re trying to buy one of these snacks off a vending machine on the street. I remember a friend once bought a dried and stretched out octopus snack?
Japanese have machines for everything, and it’s fantastic. They have bots even in their toilets. While TOTOs are now common in India today, I am not entirely sure if they come with all the features that you might see in Japan. Apart from the usual inbuilt bidet, bum washer, dryer and seat warmer, I found this really cool feature in the toilets in my office - it’s a button that simulates the flushing sound. I thought it was incredibly useful to camouflage bowel movements in a public bathroom and spare everyone the discomfort. There’s also volume control on this.

Every time I miss my time in Japan, I go eat in one of the few restaurants in Bangalore that is run by Japanese for Japanese. I hear the highest visas issued by India is to the Japanese, Koreans and Germans, thanks to the auto industry. As a result, Bangalore has a pretty decent Japanese food scene.

If you’ve never been to any of these restaurants, I have a few recommendations:

As I feel with so many countries I’ve been to, I wish I could go live in Japan someday. It’s a strange yet a warm culture. It’s one that I’ve always been curious about. There’s a wonderful series on Netflix that gives you a glimpse into the life of an average Japanese, called Midnight Diner. But for now, that’s how close I’ll get to Japan.

Life of Pri

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