This post was recovered from an old blog that I had while studying abroad in Japan. I’ve only updated misspellings or dead links, but left any cringe worthy things or immature thoughts. I’ve decided to leave them as a snapshot of who I was and to see how far I’ve come. Any photos have been freshly edited and so are not the same as what was originally posted. Over the years I had several blogs, most lost to time, and I wanted to recover some lost memories and reflect on my life.

ith just a short time left in Japan I thought it would be good to somehow recap my time here or what I’ve learn. As I rode the train from Kyoto to Himeji in the Kansai area of Japan I had plenty of time to think. What I came up with was the idea to do a post about what I WON’T miss about Japan and what I WILL miss about Japan. Once I got to thinking I realized there was quite a lot of stuff in both categories so I decided to split it into two separate posts. First I’ll start with the bad and just get it all out of the way, and then when you read what I WILL miss later it will get rid of the bad taste in your mouth from this blog post. The order of things has no significance it’s just what happened to come to mind as I was thinking about the topic. Alright let’s get started.

Humidity

This is fairly common, I mean who actually likes sweltering heat accompanied by high humidity. The humidity didn’t really seem to hit until around mid July, but boy now that it’s mid august I can barely stand it. Particularly when I went down to Kyoto for a week I brought only 3 changes of clothes, meaning I had to where each set for a couple days. I smelled so bad that I could smell myself. I feel sorry for all the people that sat next to me on the train or in the McDonald’s that I slept at. Let’s just say I’m excited to get back to the mild Oregon weather!

Train Schedule

Planning around something always sucks and so with trains they only come at certain times and even stop from around 1am to 5am. With a car I’m able to leave when I like and if I’m running late I can speed up a bit ;) ha ha. When I thought about Japan and how punctual the trains were, I was surprised at how unpunctual the people were. Then I realized that if you missed one express you had to usually wait another 15 minutes, or even just a standard train and the minimum you would have to wait is three minutes. So sometime’s it’s either you get to the meeting place really early, or you get there late. I’m usually always on time, so at first I was annoyed by people’s lateness, but soon I realized that most everyone showed up 15 minutes late. To adjust when someone said let’s meet at 6pm I would try to get there around 6:15pm and would usually meet them perfectly or still be a bit early. I better make sure I don’t do this back home.

Smoking in Restaurants

I remember that smoking in restaurants used to be legal in Oregon, but I don’t really remember it much. Now I know how much it sucks. I don’t like feeling like I just came out of a sleazy club/bar when I only at a sandwich at a coffee shop. I actually don’t really think it should be illegal to smoke inside of any restaurant, I think each individual restaurant can make their own rules. I know that the one’s in Japan that tend to have separate smoking chambers, yes they are glass chambers separating the smokers from everyone, or that don’t allow smoking are the ones I frequent. One of the worst places I went was a coffee shop called deotour, it was a freaking haze inside the place. I never went back. I can’t wait for fresh air back home when I eat out, even though I never do, which leads me to something else.

Going Out to Meet with Friends

People simply don’t hang out at each other’s houses in Japan. When you want to chill with a group of friends you either go to karaoke, go out to eat, go drinking, or stand around school and talk. I probably prefer the last as it’s the cheapest and it’s relaxed to just chill and talk. Honestly I can’t wait to get back home and go to people’s houses to just hang out though. You can bring some food over, maybe drink a little, watch a movie or play video games, and just sit around and talk. Sure I want to go out and do things with my friends too back home, but having to go out every single time we hang out is troublesome.

Japanese College

To put it bluntly, Japanese college sucks. Maybe I should be fair and say it sucks for me and my learning style. While I had a couple good classes while I was here for school, I usually felt like I was in high school with the material being covered and the difficulty of assignments. Most of the time there was not much effort to make you think, just give you some information. I did have several classes with foreign instructors which did challenge the students and try to make them speak up and think out loud. Usually this fell on deaf ears, but at least they were trying. These few teachers were the diamond in the rough. Luckily I didn’t come to Japan to learn anything but Japanese and Japanese culture, which both classes had good material and a good teacher.

Nomikais Multiple Times a Week

I started drinking in Japan and maybe it’s a good thing because it hasn’t really made me like it very much. During the middle of the term it wasn’t too bad, but at the beginning and the end of the school year sometimes there were 4 or 5 drinking parties a week. Now you’re not required to get really drunk, but of course everyone is always trying to get you to drink more, so sometime’s it can be difficult to stop drinking. One thing that I think makes these parties worse than the one’s back home are that usually everyone goes to a nomihodai, which is “all you can drink in 2 hours.” Is there any better plan for disaster? Everyone thinks “I need to drink a lot to get me money’s worth”, but is it your money’s worth to puke and be hung over? I don’t really drink back home so I don’t think I will be dealing with these parties too much anymore.

Planners

Everybody I met had a planner and if they couldn’t fit you in then you weren’t gonna hang out with them. Sometimes you had to schedule two weeks in advance, what is that shit? The worst part is that I would see these same people who were “busy” seemingly doing nothing. I just want to call someone up and say “hey wanna hang out?” and then just go meet up on the spot.