Observations about Japan (April 2025)

In April 2025, I visited Japan for the first time. Specifically, I visited Tokyo (staying in two locations), Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. This post is a list of miscellaneous observations, in no particular order, that I made while I was there. Some of these observations may be specific to the Kansai region (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe), while others may be more general to all of Japan. I certainly don’t have enough experience to know which is which. Really, I don’t have enough knowledge/experience surrounding Japan to know how accurate any of these observations are, but I wanted to write them down because they stood out to me, and I figured that someday I would take them for granted as I become more familiar with Japan. Note that I was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, and I continue to live in Ontario, so that’s my main point of comparison for these observations. There are plenty of things I didn’t note, on account of me fully expecting them, such as how amazing the transit system is.

• Parking lots take less space, and don’t need a gatehouse with a bar that lowers until payment is rendered. Instead, each parking space has a metal part you drive over that raises up to lock the car in place. Later, you can pay at a terminal to lower it.
• Most apartment buildings rely on a single exterior staircase.
• The wiring and piping for small buildings tend to be on the outside, rather than within the walls.
• Kyoto seems much more car-centric than Osaka, Kobe, or Tokyo.
• It’s relatively common for a meal to be accompanied by a raw egg on the side, which you’re expected to crack into your hot rice/broth.
  • I used to do this myself when I was eating lots of rice back in university, since I learned lots of cooking from Japanese recipes.
• Restaurant reviews on Google Maps tend to feel more accurate. 3 stars for a decent experience that’s nothing special. 4.9 stars for something extraordinary, provided there are many reviews.
• The flag of Japan is a rare sight, unlike the flag of Canada in Canada, or the US flag in the US.
• There seem to be considerably more tourists in Kyoto than in Osaka, Kobe, or Tokyo.
• English signage is common, especially when it comes to transit.
  • Google Lens is extremely useful for translating signs and menus.
• Almost every toilet/sink/etc. I saw was branded by Toto.
• No-smoking signs are respected.
• Hand driers in public washrooms are uncommon. When they’re present, they’re usually air-blade style, but have weak airflow. Paper towels to dry hands are very rare.
• Almost every public washroom has a urinal with rails on the side to help those who need assistance to stand at the urinal.
• Sidewalks and bathrooms almost always feature patches with bumps to assist blind people. In general there seems to be more assistance for blind people in Japan than anywhere else I’ve seen. A quick search reveals that Japan doesn’t have a disproportionately high number of blind people given the age distribution of their population, but the high median age of their population means that there are more blind people proportionately.
• Japanese people almost never seem to jaywalk.
• Sidewalks are rare in residential neighborhoods. Bike lanes are almost non-existent everywhere. Cars almost always respect pedestrians and cyclists, and give priority to them.
• Clothes dryers are rare. I suspect there is something of a feminist issue here, since I suspect that women will end up doing most of the labour of drying the clothes. The cost of dryers is so low nowadays that I don’t buy the excuse that it’s too expensive. Because of the humidity and rain, as well as lack of outdoor drying lines at some houses, whether clothes will be dry when you need them can be up to chance.
  • I’m hopeful that new heat pump washer-dryer combos will ameliorate this issue. They don’t need venting, nor high voltage, nor extra space beyond what a washer needs.
• Italian-Japanese fusion cuisine is popular, and quite delicious. Unlike most Japanese food, which you can get abroad, fusions like this are rare outside of Japan.
• There are palm trees in Japan.
• Egg is an extremely popular ingredient. Avoiding eggs and dairy would be difficult.
• Fiber is sorely lacking from the Japanese diet.
• Hot fried chicken can be purchased from most convenience stores, and it’s actually pretty good.
• Matcha and red bean products are widespread. Fortunately I love both.
• The average Japanese person I interact with knows barely more English than I know Japanese. Their English education system is failing them. After returning home I spoke about this with one of my brothers, who taught English in Japan, as well as another friend of mine who also taught English in Japan. Neither of them were surprised to hear this.
• Cash use is widespread for day-to-day transactions. This is not as burdensome as I had expected. Coin and bill counting machines that provide exact change help.
• Convenience stores and bento stores will cook food in the morning, and then leave it out unrefrigerated all day. Somehow this doesn’t seem to be a major issue for the people who frequently eat this food.
• Alcohol is very cheap here. You can buy it from convenience stores, discount stores, and vending machines.
• Vending machines are widespread.
• Water fountains are very rare. People are expected to buy bottled water, rather than carry a water bottle around and refill it.
• Most food products are wrapped in plastic, even if doing so is totally unnecessary.
• Japan is somewhat obsessive about recycling. First everything gets sorted into combustibles and recycling, and then the latter is taken out of the bin to be sorted by hand into ~5 different categories, each of which gets their own bag for collection.
• Public trash/recycling bins are rare.
• Almost everyone is very polite.
• Tipping is non-existent. This is very pleasant. This also enables casual restaurants to charge for your meal as you order it.
• A solid proportion of convenience store workers – maybe as many as half of them – are Indian. The Indian workers tend to speak English well. Seeing Indian people outside of this context is very rare, save for tourists.
• Coughing is prevalent. Seems like a quarter or a fifth of people on the metro are sick with something. Most who are coughing have a mask, but probably less than 75% of them do.
• Soap is often not available at sinks. Washing one’s hands without soap seems normal.
• The tank of a residential toilets is typically filled by an open stream from a faucet above the tank. This allows one to wash their hands with the water that is filling the toilet tank. I did not find this convenient compared to using a dedicated sink, particularly since soap was often not available (so I’d either bring soap over ahead of time, or leave the toilet room to wash my hands at a sink elsewhere).
• Generally a residential shower will have a tub, but then the rest of the washroom will also be waterproof, and equipped with a drain. This room may also feature a sink, but won’t typically feature a toilet. Residential toilets tend to be in their own room.
• Bikes tend to use a built-in wheel lock, or no lock at all. Bike theft doesn’t appear to be a significant issue.
• Efficient bike parking is widely available.
• Bikes are substantially cheaper in Japan than in Canada. Low-end electric mopeds cost only around 1000 CAD equivalent here, or around the cost of a regular new road bike back home.
• Most cars are boxy, sized to fit within the narrow streets.
• Many restaurants, especially in busy areas, have plastic versions of most of their dishes on display in front of their restaurant. I wonder how they all get made. Is it one company that does most of it? The displays look pretty similar.
• Japan doesn’t seem to have a litigious culture. I infer this based on the omnipresence of tripping hazards, and the play-structure designs.
• Residential units tend to use in-line hot water heaters, with a control panel that typically has a “fill bath” button.
• Keys turn opposite the direction I am used to. Clockwise to unlock, and counterclockwise to lock.
• There are convex mirrors positioned at the corner of most intersections of small one-way streets. There are no stop signs. The mirrors allow one to see if the way is clear despite the buildings having no setbacks from the corners.
• Neighborhoods tend to have speakers throughout. Sometimes, they play short pieces of music at specific times in the morning and evening.
• Throwing out large garbage items is challenging. You need to first fill out an online form, then pick up a sticker from a convenience store, and then put the item out at a location indicated in the form on a specific day.
• Forced air HVAC systems are seemingly nowhere to be found in residential units. Split system heat pumps are nearly omnipresent, and they work wonderfully. Given the cheap houses, and the piping and wiring on the outside of houses, these split systems are probably an order of magnitude cheaper to install than a forced air system.
• Bookstores will regularly have porn on display. Sometimes it’ll be behind a curtain that says 18+.
• There was some samurai-themed stuff, but no ninja-themed stuff. I wasn’t expecting much of either, but the total absence of ninja stuff surprised me.
• Disposable bamboo chopsticks are standard at most restaurants. They are generally of lower quality than the disposable chopsticks that may come with takeout meals in Canada.
• A wet towel, often warm, for washing your hands is included with practically every meal, even with food from convenience stores. If a washable towel can’t be given (e.g. at a takeout place) then a disposable wipe will be given instead.
• Arcades tend to have more interesting games. Stuff you can’t easily get at home, like Taiko, Chunithm, racing rigs, and the games where you play physical trading cards to deploy those cards in-game. Games often use an optional card to track your scores, and let you unlock items.
• Arcades are full of men between the ages of 20 and 60 for the most part. Practically no women. Many of the men are in suits.
• Japanese urinals flush both when you approach them, and when you leave. This is annoying, since the flush inevitably sprays bacteria into the air.
• Even when Japanese restaurants could charge more (as evidenced by their long lines & reservation requirements), they largely don’t seem to do so. This seems especially true in owner-operated restaurants. A combination of a culture not obsessed with money, and low rents may be the cause. A friend of mine who lives in Taiwan and visits Japan often told me that there is a general aversion to raising prices, and that restaurants that do so face backlash.
• Japanese restaurants tend to issue a single bill for the table, rather than asking each person (or couple) to pay for their portion individually. Everyone I was travelling with had cash, so paying for our portions, or paying each other back, was trivial.
• Despite the low fertility rate, I see children all over the place. Tons of women ride bikes with one or two child seats attached. Children as young as 5 roam the city independently, or in small groups with other children. I see far more children than back home, where there are objectively more children (per capita), but they are probably mostly confined to the apartment towers in poor neighbourhoods, and suburban houses.
• Prices were generally shown with and without tax. Generally, the price with tax was in parentheses. I sincerely wish Canada did this, especially since it’s often not clear which items will have tax applied to them.
• Prices didn’t tend to end in 99¥, unlike in Canada where most prices end in 99¢.
• Japanese bouldering gyms tend to use spray walls. Also, they tend to charge a one-time sign-up fee, which was always substantial, and is in addition to the cost of the day pass. This makes trying out new gyms expensive.

Unlike most other places I’ve visited (e.g. various cities across the Canada, the US, and Chile), Japan felt substantially different from home, mostly in positive ways. I greatly look forward to visiting Japan again in the future.