Japan is a country where things are normal that would be extremely strange in Latin America and the rest of the Western world.
Read on for your opinion on which of these things the Japanese do you find the most surprising.
1. Capsule Hotels
All the space you will have in this small hotel is what is needed to accommodate a bed: approximately 2 square meters.
Of course, being in Japan, you can not miss a television and Internet connection, among other electronic facilities.
Many have restaurants, vending machines, and pools. The only inconvenience, apart from the little room space, is that the bathrooms are public.
Considering that the price of the square meter of land in Tokyo already exceeds 350 thousand dollars, it is understood that the Japanese are looking for options to be able to stay in a hotel.
They are widely used by occasional travelers or by men who get drunk when leaving work and are ashamed to come home drunk.
2. Tips
If you are splendid with waiters, hotel bellboys, taxi drivers, and others who round off income with the perks they receive for their services, in Japan you will have to control your generous nature.
The Japanese consider it rude and almost offensive to receive extras for the work they do and, if you insist on leaving a few coins on the plate, they will look for you to return them, believing or pretending that you left them forgotten.
A Japanese waiter would be an unpleasant person for the union in Mexico City, Lima or Caracas.
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3. Expulsion Rooms
Even in Japan there are inefficient, undisciplined and lazy workers. When Japanese companies want to fire someone of these characteristics, without the obligation to bear all the labor costs, they deport him to the so-called expulsion room.
In these rooms, indolent workers are put to do extremely boring things, like watching a television monitor for hours at a time.
In the end, many of the tortured employees get fed up and resign from the position, thus saving the employer part of the compensation.
4. Schools without custodians
In Japanese schools, teachers — apart from teaching — direct children in cleaning the areas they use, such as classrooms, bathrooms and hallways.
This strategy allows them to save on janitor fees and helps develop people who do not consider any work dishonorable and who learn to work as a team at a young age.
It is not surprising that Japanese homes are scrupulously clean, without the need to resort to hiring domestic services.
Instead of eating in cafeterias or canteens, Japanese schoolchildren share lunch with the teacher in the classroom, serving the food themselves.
5. Sleeping at work is a good sign
Unlike in the Western world, where falling asleep at work is a horror and can lead to dismissal, Japanese employers welcome their employees napping, allowing them to regain strength to work harder.
This custom of taking a nap anywhere is called "inemuri" and apparently became fashionable in the 1980s, during the great Japanese economic expansion, when workers did not have time for full sleep.
It is not strange to see Japanese people who take advantage of the travel time in the subway to sleep. They even doze on their feet!
6. Adoption of adults
Any age is good for you to be adopted in Japan, especially if you are a responsible and industrious person.
Unlike most of the world, where adoptees are generally children, in Japan 98% of godchildren are adults between the ages of 20 and 30, most of them male.
If you are a Japanese businessman who has spent half your life working to make a fortune and your son is lazy and unable to get up before 10 in the morning, you simply adopt a disciplined and hardworking boy, who ensures business continuity and well-being of the family.
In Latin American towns, many surnames are extinguished for lack of males to perpetuate them, although the modernization of civil legislation has helped lately. In Japan they don't have that problem: they solve it with adoptions.
7. The shortest escalator in the world
In the basement of Okadaya More’s, a department store located in the city of Kawasaki, is what is surely the shortest escalator in the world, since it only has 5 steps.
The mini-ladder is called “puchicalator”, it is only 83.4 cm high and it only works to go down.
Kawasaki is in the eastern part of Tokyo Bay and, if you are in the Japanese capital, you only have to travel 17 minutes to see the "puchicalator" and have a selfie in this curiosity.
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8. Sipping loudly is welcome
With a few exceptions, in the West, loudly slurping soup, drinks, and other foods is totally at odds with table protocol.
Making it in Japan is a sign of satisfaction and that you liked the dish, apart from helping to cool soups and hot noodles.
These loud sips ring like heavenly music to chefs' ears, who take them as a compliment.
Each country has its rules for eating, by action or omission.
For example, in Italy it is frowned upon to split spaghetti, in India you could almost be killed for arguing while eating, and in Chinese restaurants, the way to say thanks is by tapping your fingers on the table.
9. Curious dental fashion
In most of the world, a well-aligned white denture is a symbol of health, hygiene and beauty and people spend fortunes on dentists, orthodontists and oral surgeons to achieve it.
In recent times, in Japan a curious fashion has been gaining ground, consisting of exactly the opposite and many people undergo cosmetic surgeries to distort their teeth.
This fad that pays tribute to tooth imperfection is called "yaeba," which means "double tooth," and its nirvana is having intimidating fangs sticking out of the teeth.
The "yaeba" fashion began with the success of a series of novels about a love story between a mortal woman and a vampire. The “crooked teeth” effect is achieved through prostheses placed on normal teeth.
10. Christmas Banquets at KFC
If you spend a Christmas night in Japan, do not be surprised by the long lines to enter the Kentucky Fried Chicken establishments: they are Japanese who are preparing to enjoy their Christmas dinner of chicken.
Apparently the custom was started by Americans who couldn't get turkeys in Japan and opted for chicken from the well-known line of restaurants.
Then a clever advertising campaign, including Santa Claus, put the Japanese to eat chicken on a day that is not a holiday in Japanese culture.
If you want to celebrate Christmas dinner in Tokyo the Japanese way, you have to reserve a table at a KFC well in advance.
11. Special footwear for the bathroom
Westerners are used to calmly entering the bathrooms with the footwear that we wear, whether we are at home or elsewhere.
Many bathrooms in Japan do not have a clearly defined area for the shower, so the floor can be wet.
For this and other cultural reasons, you have to put on specially designated slippers or slippers to enter a Japanese bathroom, which are called toire surippa.
The custom is not just for bathrooms. Also to enter houses, traditional restaurants and some temples it is necessary to remove your shoes, entering in socks or barefoot. In these cases, slippers are available for guests.
12. The preparation of the fugu
The consumption of fugu or puffer fish is one of the most fascinating gastronomic traditions in Japan and, without a doubt, the most dangerous.
According to official statistics, at least 23 people have died since 2000 from ingesting fish poison, which they say is 200 times more potent than cyanide.
Every year many intoxicated people are also hospitalized, saving their lives thanks to advances in medicine.
Most of the dead are fishermen who cook the risky delicacy without the necessary care.
In restaurants, the preparation of the dish is done by chefs who have previously had training of more than 10 years to obtain the license of fugu cooks, but not before eating their own dishes many times.
Each serving can cost more than $ 120 at a restaurant.
13. Retired men
In Japan there is a social phenomenon consisting of people, including many boys and young men, withdrawing from social and even family life, secluded in their rooms, which recalls the ancient Western Catholic custom of isolating themselves in convents and monasteries.
This sociological phenomenon is called "hikikomori" and it is estimated that there are more than half a million practitioners of all ages, including people who have never experienced social phobias or personality disorders that could induce such behavior.
The only contacts of those affected with reality are usually the Internet, television and video games; often not even that.
When parents bring a hikikomori child back to normal life, the boys must go through a period of readjustment, sometimes harsh, due to the loss of their social skills.
14. Suicidal forest
The Aokigahara is a forest located at the base of Mount Fuji, which Japanese mythology associates with the devil.
It is the second place in the world with the most suicides, after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and is dotted with posters that exhort people not to kill themselves and to seek therapeutic help for their problems.
There are up to 100 suicides a year and there are groups of officials and volunteers who roam the forest in search of corpses.
It is an extremely quiet place, with little wildlife and, worse, the high iron content of the earth seems to disturb the operation of compasses and GPS.
Nor does a popular book published in 1993, entitled "Complete Suicide Manual," which defines the forest as the perfect place to die and praises the artistic conditions of hanging, does not help.
15. The Island of Gas Masks
Miyakejima is one of the Izu Islands, an archipelago located in south-central Japan. It has an active volcano called Mount Oyama, which has experienced several eruptions in recent years, sending poisonous gases into the atmosphere.
When the volcano erupted in 2005, the inhabitants of Miyakejima were equipped with gas masks to protect themselves from sulfides and other toxic fumes, which they must carry with them at all times.
The local government activated a siren system to warn the population at times when levels of poisonous gases rise dangerously.
16. Hotels for love
All over the world lovers escape to hotels and there are cheap establishments for occasional adventures, but this Japanese concept takes enjoyment to another level.
Japanese "Love" hotels usually have two rates: one for a stay of up to 3 hours and another that offers a "rest" for a whole night.
Almost all have an erotic video service and many rent costumes and accessories, in case your sexual fantasy is to sleep with a police officer, a nurse, a chef, a waitress or a torturer.
It is estimated that about 2.5 million Japanese people turn to these love havens every day, which are very discreet and minimize eye contact with customers. If you are interested in one, look for the heart symbol.
17. Rabbit Island
One of the 6852 islands that make up the immense Japanese archipelago is Okunoshima, also called Rabbit Island because of the large number of tame and friendly rodents that populate its territory.
However, the history of these animals is grim. Japan used the small island to make mustard gas, which was used as a chemical weapon against the Chinese, and rabbits were introduced to test the effectiveness of the atrocious product.
Currently, Okunoshima has the Poison Gas Museum, which warns of the dire consequences of the use of chemical weapons.
18. The Ghost Island
It is unusual for the Japanese to populate an island and then abandon it, although Hashima is an exception.
On this island located 20 km from the port of Nagasaki, a coal mine operated between 1887 and 1974, producing more than 400,000 tons per year. During the greatest Carboniferous apogee, the island population exceeded 5,200 people.
When coal was no longer needed, replaced by oil, the mine was closed and Hashima depopulated and is now called the Ghost Island, despite the fact that in 2009 it was opened to tourism.
The tv series The land without humans, from the History Channel, was partially recorded in the abandoned Hashima, with its dilapidated, dreary-looking buildings and an eerie silence only altered by the buzzing of the waves and the chirping of birds.
19. Kancho
It is a common and distasteful joke (at least within Western criteria) practiced by the Japanese, especially school-age children.
It consists of intertwining the little, ring and middle fingers, placing the indexes in parallel and pointing outwards, with the thumbs raised, making a "gun" with the hands.
Next, the barrel of the gun (the index fingers) is introduced into the anal cavity of another person who is surprised from behind, shouting "Kancho"
Making this disgusting game in Mexico and other Latin American countries would surely fill the school sick rooms with boys injured by their own classmates.
Even the kancho would qualify as a crime of harassment and even sexual abuse in many places.
20. Electronic toilets
The electronics industry is one of Japan's strengths and traditional toilets have taken a major modernization blow.
People not used to electronic devices would have trouble urinating in a Japanese toilet.
Cups, sinks and other facilities are full of sensors, microchips and buttons, including functions for heating, water with variable temperature and pressure, drying with hot air, elimination of odors by catalytic conversion and ventilation, nebulization, automatic cleaning, washing, enemas and options for children.
The cost of a state-of-the-art mug can exceed $ 3,000, but you still need to sit down.
21. Cat cafes
Japan and other countries have banned the keeping of pets in residential complexes and apartment buildings as a measure against the waste and noise that these animals can generate.
However, the Japanese - at the forefront in several things - have popularized the "Cat Cafes", where they house several kittens so that people can go to stroke their fur and admire them while they play.
The Japanese have specialized the business, operating cafes for different breeds and colors of cats.
Japan's export prowess has caught up with this idea and there are already cat cafes in several European cities, including Vienna, Madrid, Paris, Turin and Helsinki.
In Latin America, the first coffee for cats, The Cattery, opened in 2012 in Tabasco 337, Colonia Roma Norte, Mexico City.
22. Penis Festival
The Kanamara Matsuri or Penis Festival is a Shinto festival held in the spring in the city of Kawasaki, in which the male sexual organ is worshiped as a tribute to fertility.
On that day, usually the first Sunday of April, everything is penis-shaped on Kawasaki. A huge one is carried on the shoulders of the crowd, others are made of different materials such as souvenirs and many are sold as lollipop treats.
The vegetables served in the restaurants are shaped like a phallus and the illustrations and decorations are based on male members.
It was popularized by sex workers, who in this way asked spirits for protection against sexually transmitted diseases.
Penises are also invoked by couples who want to conceive children and even by people who ask for prosperity in business.
Part of the festival's proceeds are used to finance projects in the fight against AIDS.
23. Coffees for hugs
In Japan, not having a partner to hug while you sleep is no longer a problem. In Tokyo, a cafe opened its doors with the original idea that you sleep in the arms of a pretty girl.
The place is called Soineya, which means "tent to sleep together"; It is located in Akihabara, a Tokyo district specialized in electronics and its business mission is "to offer the customer the maximum comfort and simplicity to sleep with someone".
Rubbing and other approaches to sex are prohibited, but surely some adventures will have arisen in the heat of proximity.
The base price only includes the hug. If you want to caress your companion's hair or look into her eyes, you must pay extra.
24. Vending machines
Vending machines have a much older history than you might imagine. The first, designed 2000 years ago by the engineer Heron of Alexandria, dispensed holy water in the temples, although we do not know if it was free.
The first modern ones were installed in London in 1888 to sell postcards and that same year they began to dispense chewing gum in New York.
However, the country where these machines are most present in the everyday landscape is Japan, where there is one for every 33 inhabitants and you get them everywhere.
One of the things most bought in the machines is ramen, a typical Japanese dish based on noodles in a fish, soy and miso broth.
25. The tuna auction in Tsukiji
The largest fish market in the world is Tsukiji, Tokyo, and one of its most appreciated sights by tourists is the tuna auction.
The first bid of the year is spectacular, with all the participants eager to win the opening piece.
The first bluefin tuna sold in 2018, at the auction on January 5, was a 405 kg specimen that fetched a price of $ 800 per kilo. More than $ 320,000 for a single fish is an outburst, even though the animal weighs almost half a ton.
26. Public toilets
The first public baths of which there is evidence were in the ancient Indus Valley civilization, but the largest were the Romans, particularly the Baths of Diocletian, which could accommodate up to 3,000 bathers daily.
The concept fell into disuse in the West, but not in Japan, where there are traditionalists and modernists. In those that preserve the old traditions, the water in the bathtubs is heated with firewood.
Not even the bombings during World War II prevented the Japanese from continuing to use public toilets. When cities were attacked, electricity was cut off and people went to bathe by lighting themselves with candles.
For many people it is cheaper to go to a public bathroom than to have a bathtub at home and have to cover the cost of heating the water.
27. Nude Festival
The Hadaka Matsuri or Naked Festival is a Shinto event in which participants are half-naked, wearing only a fundoshi, a kind of traditional Japanese underpants that fell into disuse after World War II, when the Americans introduced American underwear.
The most famous festivals are those held in the temples of the cities of Okayama, Inazawa and Fukuoka.
These events are usually held on the third weekend of February and can gather up to 10,000 loincloth-clad Japanese, believers in the purifying virtues of semi-nakedness.
To avoid complications with so many crowded and almost naked people, in the Hadaka Matsuri it is forbidden to consume alcohol and each participant must keep their identification under their underwear.
Which of these Japanese customs do you find the most strange? Do you know of any other Japanese rarity that might be on this list? Leave us your comments.
