While I love Japan, there are some challenges to living here, including difficulty finding really good cheese, movie theaters that cost the equivalent of $22 per person and the occasional street that’s so narrow a car and a bicycle couldn’t pass each other side-by-side. There’s also a huge problem with hay fever during allergy season, thanks to erroneous policies by Japan’s Ministry of Forestry, which decided to standardize planting sugi (Japanese cedar) trees almost exclusively several decades ago…leading to a massive outpouring of pollen when all the trees start to flower at the same time. Happily, researchers in Toyama Prefecture have developed a special strain of Japanese cedar that produces no pollen, and plans to plant 30,000 saplings in the coming years. Maybe in a generation or so that unfortunate aspect of living in Japan can be improved.
Hay fever in Japan is an issue for many.
