Japan Day 9: Special Resident of Japan

8 April, 2018 (Sunday)

I have made note of a few more observations and findings about Japan.

·    People here are very polite. They listen attentively but still stick to the script with their answers. For example, at our hotel in Kyoto, while entering the breakfast room, we were were trying to get a discount of 10% (as it said on the board) on top of a 10% discount voucher from reception. They patiently listened to me explain what we were after, and then simply took the voucher and ushered me into the room, courteously describing which one was for continental and which one for the Japanese breakfast.

·    Japan has self-defence forces but no military for offensive purposes after the second World War.

·    Every train or have taken in Japan has been bang on time. Even the hotel shuttle bus that refused to wait for Khushboo’s nature’s call.

·    I found out yesterday that some metros here have a women's only compartment, and also fast trains. Like Mumbai. And the ‘women only’ applies only between 6:57 and 8:56.

·    Tokyo subway is all spread out, with various centres around the city instead of having a London-like compact zone 1 and spreading out in concentric circles. If you want to travel between, say, Shinjuku and the Tokyo Skytree, that's a distance of 11 miles by road and would take 40 minutes on the Metro (a combination of private rail and subway lines). An equivalent distance in London gets you from Finchley Central to Kew Gardens and takes over an hour. It is way busier than London metro, and during peak times there are “pushers” i.e. staff who push people into carriages.

·    Shinjuku has a population density of about 17,000 people per square kilometre but undeterred by this in 2015 it has granted citizenship to a new resident, who only goes by one name - Godzilla.

Godzilla's citizenship certificate
Name: Godzilla
Address: Shinjuku-ku, Kabuki-cho, 1-19-1
Date of birth: April 9, 1954

Reason for special residency: Promoting the entertainment of and watching over the Kabuki-cho neighborhood and drawing visitors from around the globe
Previous visits to Shinjuku Ward: 3 times; Godzilla (1984), Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991), Godzilla 2000 Millennium (1999)

·    Japanese say “hei” from the chest for “yes”.

·    It is the only country where I have seen the usage of more than 24 hours time to highlight late night timings e.g. several clubs and restaurants had opening times listed as 18.00 hrs to 27.00 hrs. 

·    Japanese people are so polite that when you ask them the way they come with you to show you there if it is close by. We have experienced this multiple times during this trip.

·    I would later read in the book “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall that Japanese statisticians fear that the population will shrink to under 100 million by the middle of the century. If the current birth rate continues, it is even possible that by 2110 the population will have fallen below the 50 million it was in 1910. Japanese governments are trying a variety of measures to reverse the decline. A recent example is using millions of dollars of tax payers’ money to fund a matchmaking service for young couples. Subsidised konkatsu parties are arranged for single men and women to meet, eat, drink and – eventually – have babies. Immigration is another possible solution but Japan remains a relatively insular society and immigration is not favoured by the population.

·    Regarding immigration in Japan, I would later read in ‘Upheaval’ by Jared Diamond: “Japan is, and prides itself on being, the most ethnically homogenous affluent or populous country in the world. It doesn’t welcome immigrants, makes it difficult for anyone who wants to immigrate to do so, and makes it even more difficult for anyone who has succeeded in immigrating to receive Japanese citizenship. As a percentage of a country’s total population, immigrants and their children constitute 28% of Australia’s population, 21% of Canada’s, 16% of Sweden’s, and 14% of the U.S.’s, but only 1.9% of Japan’s. Among refugees seeking asylum, Sweden accepts 92%, Germany 70%, Canada 48%, but Japan only 0.2%.”

·    Also from the book ‘Upheaval’ by Jared Diamond: “A second set of strengths of Japan, besides those economic ones, is its “human capital,” i.e., the strengths of its human population. That population numbers more than 120 million and is healthy and highly educated. Japanese life expectancy is the highest in the world: 80 years for men, 86 for women. The socio-economic inequality that limits opportunities for a large fraction of Americans is greatly reduced in Japan: Japan is the world’s third-most egalitarian nation in its distribution of income, behind only Denmark and Sweden. That’s partly a result of Japanese government school policies: schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas have smaller classes (more favourable teacher-to-student ratios) than do schools in richer areas, thereby making it easier for children of poorer citizens to catch up. (In contrast, the American school system tends to perpetuate inequality by packing more students into classrooms in poor areas.) Social status in Japan depends more on education than on heredity and family connection: again, the reverse of U.S. trends. In short, rather than investing disproportionately in just a fraction of its citizens, Japan invests in all of them – at least, in all of its male citizens.”