When a foreigner first comes to live in Japan, there are many small things they’ll notice. Ceramic roof tiles on every house, which makes them appear to the eye to be beautiful temples until you get used to looking at them. Menus listing “kcal” for food items, since what we call a calorie really is a kilocalorie. People pointing at objects with their middle fingers, which would be rather insulting back home but which means nothing here. More vending machines than you can possibly imagine. Another aspect of Japan that struck me were the men who stood in the road to guide traffic around patches of road construction, which seemed like the most ridiculously easy job in the world, although they take it very seriously. They’d hold up their little orange baton at you then bow their thanks to you when you stopped, and like a fool I’d bow back, hoping no one could see the stupid foreigner.
