Japan is a weird, amazing, amusing and confusing place, and I’m not just talking about the maid cafes and pornographic manga. Even things that your average Japanese would consider completely commonplace and boring can be captivating for foreigners. After exhaustive research (well, some research anyway), Rocket News has compiled this list of 46 things visitors to Japan find surprising.
1.The trains actually come on time
2.The fruit is really delicious (There’s a lot of cross breeding)
3.The bread at 7-11 is really good
4.Taxi doors open automatically
6.The high likelihood of lost items being returned to you
7.Everyone eats KFC for Christmas dinner
8.There are vending machines absolutely everywhere
9.You can buy alcohol and tobacco from those ubiquitous vending machines
10.The Washlet bidets
11.You can drink water from the tap
12.The tea isn’t sweetened
13.You can smoke in restaurants
14.There are free samples at the supermarket
15.There are tolls on the highways
16.You can find absolute masterpieces of pastry at cake shops
17.The confusing, complex layout of Tokyo
18.The buttons to summon a waiter at family-style restaurants
19.Touch-screen menus at bars and restaurants
20.There are holes in the 5 and 50 yen coins
21.People hand out free packets of tissues on the street
22.The quality and selection at 100 yen shops
23.Japanese people really like Yahoo!
24.GPS is automatically included in rental cars
25.You can leave a bag to save your seat and no one will steal it
26.A small-size drink is actually quite small
27.There are power lines all over the place
28.People politely line up to wait for the train
29.Heated toilet seats
30.The high price of movie tickets
31.There are pachinko parlors everywhere
32.The skill used in wrapping gifts and other purchases
33.The multi-storey parking garages
34.The ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) system on the highways
35.There are hot springs just for your feet
36.There are women-only cars on the trains
37.The love hotels
38.Cigarettes are really cheap
39.It’s so safe you can go walking around in the middle of the night with no problem
40.Japanese squat-style toilets
41.The incredible variety of KitKat flavors
42.There are still elevator girls who operate the elevator for you
43.The packets of condiments that you can easily open with one hand
44.Capsule hotels
45.The lucky bags sold at New Years
46.The rooms at business hotels are tiny.
47.The foreign guys dating beautiful Japanese girls are often ugly
So, what do you think, Japanophiles? Were these things that surprised you? Something to add? Let’s hear it in the comments below.