There are certain eternal questions that foreigners have about Japan. For example, the word ao (AH-oh) means “blue” yet is regularly used to describe green traffic lights, which are always perceived as ao and never midori (green), although they’re the same color as every other country. Confusion can arise from names, too. Once I was reading the kairanban (a kind of circular newsletter that goes to everyone in our immediate neighborhood; when one family reads it, then put a check by their name and take it to the next house on the list) and I noticed that 11 out of 19 families around us had the same family name as us (Yanai) despite everyone being apparently unrelated. About a kilometer away, there’s a patch of houses with families whose last names are all Hosoi, but they, too, are not related to each other, and no Japanese person can tell me how this might have come about. Other questions come up at random times. Why do some trucks play the Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade theme song to let you know they’re backing up? Why is the Japanese word for an all-you-can-eat buffet “Viking,” and why is it such a challenge for the Japanese to write “harem” without turning it into Harlem? The biggest mystery may be, why do Japanese never notice these things about their own country until foreigners come along and ask questions? So, what’s your Japan “eternal question”?
Some “eternal questions” about Japan.
