10 Interesting Facts About Living in Japan

[rubyredknowsitall]

I've been asked to do an AMA on here a few times, but to be honest I'd never be able to be open or strong enough to answer all the potentially personal questions - some AMA I've looked through have got a bit brutal!

But I thought I'd share a few really interesting topic points about living here (if you're interested in Japan)

1. If you want an abortion - you need the fathers signature on the consent form before a doctor will proceed. In theory this should only be if you're married but in reality it's not as doctors are afraid of being sued. I whole heartedly disagree with this - my husband thinks it's terrible too. No signature - you're having a baby. I had an abortion two years ago and thankfully the man in question supported me, but I can say that requiring him to be supportive is a highly vulnerable place to be emotionally. They're also expensive and it wasn't until 2023 that medical abortion was legalized - I had to have surgery in 2022 at 6 weeks.
2. If you divorce/ sperate in Japan there is usually NO joint custody of children, so usually fathers are never allowed to see their children again. The man I stated above (Mr abortion) was in this situation, and has NEVER met his 14 year old son although he pays maintenance and has gone to court multiple times to try and get a single visitation right. It's broken him a bit I feel.
3. There's no such thing as GPs in Japan - you go to the specific doctor in question immediately. So if you have a stomach problem you go to an "internal doctor". The good point is basically no waiting times, but after leaving the UK system I still don't fully understand how conditions that require multiple specialisms get treated....
4. Before you get your provisional driving licence you have to go to a driving school (with classroom lectures), learn to drive on their internal course and pass a test. Only then are you allowed on real roads - they think we're mental! Despite their vigorous driving schools, I've not seen much better driving here........
5. House prices depreciate similar to cars - they're very much not an investment. Reason is they get torn down fairly regularly and rebuilt owing to upgraded earthquake regulations. As such houses are built very cheaply without central heating etc (winter is actual hell with many rooms in my home reaching 2 degree C last month). There's a reason uniqlo invented heattech!
6. There's no such thing as joint bank accounts - and if a husband or wife transfer money between each other, above a certain threshold is taxed. A member of the family needs to be legally registered as the 'head of the household' - so if I overpay something like state pension the refund can go directly back into my husbands bank account (or vice versa if I'm head of the household). This does also mean that when I passed my driving test and was added to my husbands driving insurance as a new driver, it cost us an extra 5p a month. :) Until I crashed the car into a fence............
7. Wives are legally able to be registered as 'dependents' on their husbands, so if they earn beneath a threshold, the husbands company will pay their pension contributions and health care contributions for them.
8. Minimum wage where I live is 931 JPY - £4.89 an hour, and state pension is equivalent to about £4,200 a year.
9. A major part of their economy is UPF - wafer ham with plastic cheese and lettuce sandwich is an example of a staple sandwich here - my healthy diet actually took a huge hit upon arrival. They eat a lot more meat and a lot less fish than I expected.
10. Ovens are not in most kitchens here - baking isn't part of the traditional Japanese diet - deep frying is. ALOT of food here is deep fried which unfortunately I can't digest.

To those wondering the good points about Japan - there's a lot! The nature is a million times more beautiful than the UK in my opinion, the country is seriously safe with actually too many police, education is outstanding and the gap between the rich and poor is much narrower. Customer service is brilliant and it's a culture with clearly defined rules that most people abide to (no eating or talking on trains or buses etc).

This last point is a bit more controversial so I'll just say it's from my personal experience but men seem much more prepared to get married and accept that women need "stability" to have children. They're much more aware of our biological clocks and don't approve of women getting picked up an put down if it's going to wind her time down. This attitude has done nothing towards the birth rate though 😂

For those that have been more recently is food still ridiculously over packaged?

in the early 00s individual pieces of fresh fruit always had loads of plastic packaging. Biscuits were normally individually wrapped within the main packaging. You could almost never buy anything without being given a little plastic bag. I really do hope that aspect has moved on a bit.

Loving this thread, very interesting.

Do you have a ninja? I couldn't imagine not having an oven!

Do most people live in apartments?

@Clearinguptheclutter Single use plastics are still the way to go in Japan - everything is overpackaged - and no rubbish bins. There are some token attempts but really its shocking. There are single use hairbrushes in all the hotel hot baths all packaged in plastic...

@rubyredknowsitall how much Japanese do you know? I found Japanese characters hard though my listening comprehension wasn't bad after 2 years.

We were in the touristy areas last year and I was surprised by how many Japanese people spoke English compared to the quite rural area I lived in 30 years ago.

Yeah, my knowledge is out of date but I wouldn't have rated the Japanese education system 20 years ago. Don't know if things have improved now, but my Japanese friends don't seem to think so.

I always thought that the primary schools are pretty good, but there's no way that I'd have wanted my own dc going through the Japanese secondary system.

I worked as an English teacher when there, in a language school where the kids would come for an hour every evening. Mostly teenagers but some younger .
they’d have normal school, plus some kind of cram school before and after school, plus some sport, then they’d come to me at 7pm, mostly looking like zombies. And they usually STILL weren’t finished for the day. I think primary can be more relaxed but culturally, secondary education is poles apart to the uk. I know which I’d never let any child of mine do.

Learning the kanji is mainly a matter of time, in my experience - as it is for young Japanese children. If you stick at it for long enough, you get to the point where you can read quite fluently.

I can still read pretty well 20+ years on, but I'm definitely a bit rustier than I was back then! Use it or you lose it!!

Depressing that the single use plastics are still ubiquitous.

I think, because I went to one of the worst schools in the country (in South London) that actually got closed down, I've always coveted an education. I didn't even get to learn the recorder in primary school, and in secondary school I often had teachers who couldn't speak English or didn't even show up.

Again, neither my husband or ex-husband (who's a doctor) went to cram schools - they had a lot of time off too. I live in the countryside so things are a little different to city life. I don't think my area even has a cram school

Oh, I imagined the produce displayed on stalls like in Italy, but even more beautiful. Don’t know where I got this idea, probably some ancient cookbook

Went to Japan 12 years ago and a few things struck me:-

First how spotlessly clean Tokyo was, and how smooth the roads were. No potholes, no loose pavements, no litter, dirt or scuffed buildings and certainly no graffiti. There must be immense civic pride and a feeling that stuff just "works". Why are UK's streets so unkempt and dirty by comparison? Why are people here seemingly happy to live in shitholes, infact it's almost celebrated; areas described as "edgy" or "up-and-coming". Just no.

Vending machines everywhere. If that was the UK they'd be smashed up within days. Why do a sizeable minority in this country feel compelled to act like twats?

A lot of people on public transport wore face masks, presumably to stop the spread of coughs and colds. Which made me think they must be a waste of time if so many people still get coughs and colds!

No sort of interaction between strangers on public transport. For example in this country if you wanted to sit on a spare train seat you'd say something along the lines of sorry dear/mate, mind if I squeeze in there, yeah no worries, cheers etc. Whereas in Japan they would just stand there, someone would move to let the person sit down but no sort of acknowledgement of each other.

The vegetables are not displayed like in italy. Usually they are sold pre-bundled onto a little shallow bowl sieve type of thing. So for example three eggplants, or five cucumbers, in a little pile. The price per bowl is marked clearly. Some are sold in bunches in plastic bags. Something really big might be sold as one item, sometimes they've been placed on one of the bowls, sometimes not. You select your bowls, take them to a checkout which each stall usually has, they empty the bowlfuls into a plastic bag (they are not selling the bowls!).
Traditional pickle stalls will sell the pickles directly from the plastic or wooden (bamboo?) buckets in which they are made.

No idea how to put in an image from elsewhere qhile on an android, but if you google "stock photo Japanese market stall" you get a pretty representative selection of how they look.

First how spotlessly clean Tokyo was, and how smooth the roads were. No potholes, no loose pavements, no litter, dirt or scuffed buildings and certainly no graffiti. There must be immense civic pride and a feeling that stuff just "works". Why are UK's streets so unkempt and dirty by comparison? Why are people here seemingly happy to live in shitholes, infact it's almost celebrated; areas described as "edgy" or "up-and-coming". Just no.

This is mainly based on books I've read rather than any experience so feel free to tell me I'm talking rubbish, but my sense is that in the west we have more emphasis on individuality and personal rights/freedom/determination - which has the flipside of feeling less belonging to a wider culture/society that includes you and works together. So the sense of 'all together' civic pride in less crime, clean streets etc, but then you are also expected to do more for the greater good than for yourself.

Huge over generalisation I know but it's something I'm interested in.

Also regardless of individualism it should be a bloody given that people do their jobs well in this country yet it seems there are no consequences for designing terrible, non-joined up transport, Council services etc. So there's definitely something about total lack of accountability and pride in doing a decent job in the UK. (I may be in a bad mood because of our local council's utter nonchalance in the face of something that effects hundreds of people that I discussed with them this morning!)

This is one of my favourite things to do also! It's so soothing watch and I love how every day mundane activities or tasks have such a lovely air of ritual about them.

Japan is also on my bucket list too. Great thread, thanks OP

possession of child porn was made illegal only in 2014 I think.

//

Really? Jesus that's shocking > starts to reconsider bucket list <

My husband is also left handed and writes with his right. His grandmother trained him to do it. Odd.

Also my daughters had to have their natural hair colour (I.e. not black) registered on their personal info form at school so they weren’t told off for having the wrong colour hair.

My oldest graduated high school last year and moved to the UK the first opportunity she got as she wanted some more freedom.. And now rings me complaining that uni is always closed so she can’t do her projects. School here is never closed. Apart from 5 days at new year. Grass is always greener I guess.

Doh. Huuuhe apologies to Japan as I skim read that as made legal!!! what a tool I am

The national minimum wage is very low. Does that mean the cost of living is lower than here? If it's about the same how do those on low wages manage?

Interested to hear about the relatively recent change in child pornography laws. My DH said he was horrified when visited in the early 80s that there were child porn mags openly on sale in ordinary newsagent type shops. Completely normalised and displayed along with everything else. He said it made him realise that what we cannot take for granted that even something as unquestionably 'wrong' in our culture as child sex abuse is seen the same way in other 'civilised' cultures.

Is mental health and associated health issues addressed in Japanese society/culture. Is Menopause and female reproductive health, especially periods and PMT discussed?

You're making some major assumptions here.

face masks, presumably to stop the spread of coughs and colds.

There are many reasons for wearing masks in Japan. Protection against air pollution is a big one in the cities. If you do have a cold it's rude to blow your nose in public, so one solution is to stick a cotton wool plug up each nostril and cover them with a mask for neatness. And a surprising number of people wear them simply because they don't want people looking at them - especially teenagers who have spots or are self conscious about their appearance.

But even if they are worn for infection prevention, you say

so many people still get coughs and colds!

Do they? I'd be interested to know relative incidence/prevalence figures to back up this assertion. (Ideally, compared with other countries with similar population densities and levels of public transport use.)

I'm sorry, I don't know.

Cost of living, overall is similar - rent is a little lower but food / healthcare higher

I haven't got a bloody clue how people on these wages cope, I'm surprised they do! it's insanely low isn't it?

@NoBinturongsHereMate ok.

A lot of people wear masks to protect against hay-fever, too.