Living in Japan as an American Abroad (Cultural Differences)

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Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old-school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.  

Kristin Wilson, host:   00:01:16    Hey there, Kristin, from Traveling with Kristin here, and welcome to episode 197 of Badass Digital Nomads. We are in the heart of cherry blossom season or Sakura season in Japan and around the world where cherry blossoms bloom their beautiful flowers. And so I was inspired to share with you a video that I made a few years ago about being an American in Japan. It's funny that this video actually popped up on a smart TV in a rental property that I was staying in, and it's quite a surreal experience to see your videos suggested from other people's houses and apartments <laugh>. So I also feel like I get an objective or a more objective perspective on my videos when watching under these circumstances because first, it's been a few years since I made the video and also I'm not watching it as an editor, but as a viewer.  

Kristin:    00:02:22    So it's almost like this out-of-body experience where I'm watching another person that's not myself, especially because it's myself from the past. So anyway, I came across this video and suggested videos. I rewatched the whole thing and I was quite mesmerized actually, and I forgot most of the stuff that I had talked about and I thought, oh, this would make a great podcast. And so I wanted to share it with you today. Not that many people have seen it. I think it has around a hundred thousand views and so chances are you haven't come across it yet. But this was a video that I made during the pandemic when I was missing travel a lot and I was reflecting on places that I had traveled to. I was looking at photos and video clips and things like that and I just felt like making this video about Japan, which is a country that I really love and I miss and hopefully I can travel back there soon.  

Kristin:    00:03:20    And so I added some um, texture, some sound design, some background noise from the raw footage that I shot in Japan so you can kind of hear some of the sounds of the streets of Japan or the breeze and the wind and the trees and the different places that I was documenting that journey. And it was also a very special time, right when I launched my YouTube channel in January of 2018, that's when I was in Japan. And so these experiences and these perceptions that I had, they just seem so vivid to me, but also so innocent in a way. Like I was documenting my travels for the first time and of course, I've learned a lot about how to shoot videos and it was just really fun to kind of go through that footage from the very first time that I ever started documenting my travels and as really a beginner in the idea of content creation.  

Kristin:    00:04:36    Like I didn't have a podcast yet and I was just this anonymous enigma nomad around the world. And so it just seems like a very kind of private glimpse into that experience that I had not knowing that any of it was ever going to be in a video or in a podcast just like taking some video clips and messing around with cameras for the first time. So it's kind of funny to think that I made this video about that experience two years or three years after I was there and now it's five years since I was there. But I wanted to share this with you because it is cherry blossom season, spring in Japan. Japan has reopened for travel a link to Japan's tourism board in the show notes. I'll also link to a previous podcast I did about asking the question, can you ever fully adapt to a foreign culture?  

Kristin:    00:05:45    And that podcast was inspired by a story that I saw about a chef who moved to Japan and I really resonated with his story having been to Japan myself and felt the same things and felt this similar culture shock. And then this year in January, I read Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential and he has a chapter dedicated to going to Japan and experiencing culture shock. And it was also surreal to read how his experience was so similar to what I experienced and what other people have experienced when they go to Japan. And even if you haven't been to Japan or you don't plan on going to Japan, I think that the insights into the differences in cultures in all different countries can help you adapt to any culture because the process is the same, but the differences are different. And this has been a topic that's come up a lot on my channel and in comments and conversations lately with listeners and subscribers and my Patreon patrons and everyone's very interested and we're, you know, we're all interested in people, we're all interested in culture and we're all interested in getting those insights into the local lifestyle in different countries.  

Kristin:    00:07:06    And I find it so fascinating, the observation of culture, the study of culture, and also how it's different from different perspectives like your perspective going there. The first time will be different from staying there for a few months, from going back next year from living there for 10 years. It's an ever-evolving personal experience. But you can also learn through other people's personal experiences. And Japan is a society and a culture that's notoriously hard to break into as a foreigner and to really assimilate there. And I'm always curious also to think about what locals think about foreigner's opinions of their culture because it's obviously going to be different from how the locals perceive their own culture and how you and I perceive the culture of our home countries and also how our perception of our culture might be different than other fellow citizens of our country.  

Kristin:    00:08:15    So it's a very interesting topic overall. So I hope you enjoy this. A recap of differences that I noticed and cultural shocks that I experienced as an American living in Japan.

Landing:

Also, the apartment that I was staying in when this video came up on YouTube was by a company called Landing that has apartments for remote workers, traveling nurses, digital nomads, business travelers, people who want to travel across the United States or people who are maybe freelancers or just regular people who want to move around and experience the lifestyle in different parts of the country. Landing has a really cool membership option where you pay a monthly fee and you can stay in any of the apartments in their network in over 375 cities. These are fully furnished apartments, flexible leases, no long-term commitments and the apartments are really nice. I've stayed in three different landing apartments and they're always really well furnished, really comfortable beds, always good amenities in the buildings and the complexes and really good customer service.  

So you can use my affiliate link in the show notes to check out landing and find your home away from home. Their annual membership is only $199 and it allows you to transfer anywhere within the landing network with just two weeks' notice. So whether you want to live in a landing for two months or 10 months, whatever suits your schedule, you can do that. And then as a bonus, they also give you seven bonus travel anywhere nights that you can use throughout the Landing Network each year. So you get a week of free vacation where you can check out a city that you've never been before. So maybe you want to go to San Diego for a week, or Phoenix, Arizona, or Denver, Colorado, New York, you name it. With nearly 400 cities, you can definitely find something for you. So this podcast is not sponsored by Landing, but I do have an affiliate link for them. I have used it myself, I had a good experience and it's also just a coincidence that I was in one of their apartments when I saw this video that inspired this podcast. So here we are, full circle people, enjoy.  

Podcast:

Kristin:    00:10:54    Do you ever have those kind of days where you're like really busy and you're outside running errands and before you know it, seven hours have passed, you're starving and you just type into Google Maps, food, <laugh>, like some kind of caveman because you can't even be bothered to type in like the kind of restaurant you're looking for? Well, that was me the other day and I ended up at a sushi place, but it was actually an authentic Japanese restaurant. And when I walked in and looked at the menu and everything, I couldn't help but be transported back to when I was living in Japan in 2018. 

Kristin:    00:11:30    We were in Kiyosumi District of Tokyo.  

Kristin:    00:12:03    And as I was sitting there eating my Bento box, I wrote down this list of things that I loved about Japan and things I noticed as a foreigner living there. So welcome to the first episode of a show that we can call Kristin's Observations of Foreign Countries. And let me know in the comments below if you wanna see more stuff like this. We can make it a series, we can make it a thing. Anything is possible. I ended up living in Japan on accident actually, which might sound really weird, but I went there originally for a two-week snowboarding trip and it turned into three months because I had two really bad snowboard injuries backed back, I hurt my neck, 

Kristin:   00:12:43    I have an injured neck today and I'm not snowboarding  

Kristin:    00:12:46    And I hurt my um, hand like pulled all of the ligaments in my hand.

Kristin:   00:12:51    Oh, this happened,  

Kristin:    00:12:59    So I ended up flying from Niseko in Hokkaido on the northern island down to Tokyo and I went to physical therapy for a few months and I ended up living at a co-working and co-living space called Rome Tokyo, which I don't think is open anymore. But it was an amazing experience and I'm really glad that I got injured now because I got to experience the culture and the people and the country of Japan for those months. And it happened to be during cherry blossom season as well. So it was so beautiful and I traveled around a lot. So I have this list here of 13 things that I noticed while living as a foreigner in Japan. And here we go. So the first thing I noticed hands down was how nice the people are. And this started immediately when I landed in Tokyo when random airport employees came running up to me, smiling, bowing, taking my luggage, carrying my surfboard bag all the way out through the airport to the taxi.  

Kristin:    00:14:03    And I was just like, what is this? And they didn't even want tips. They were just like being nice. And that was my first introduction to Japan the first few minutes that I stepped off the plane and it was the same my entire time there. People are so nice and it seems very genuine wherever you go, whether you are getting in or off of an elevator at the mall or whether you're buying something in a convenience store or somebody's holding the door like anywhere you go, the coffee shop, people are smiling, bowing just, ugh, God, they're so friendly.  

Kristin:    00:14:40    Wait, they just handed me an envelope when I boarded for, she's handing out envelopes of $50 bills, 5,000 yen for the inconvenience of our flight being delayed. I'm okay with it.  

Kristin:    00:14:55    And um, even when you go to the store, you could buy something like a bottle of water and they'll be giving you your receipt with two hands like – just so, so friendly. I love that about Japan. Can you imagine going to Walmart and they're like, oh, thank you so much, Arigato, here's your receipt and they're bowing. No, that would <laugh> that would never, that would not happen.  

Kristin:    00:15:16    Oh, there was this one time that I accidentally left my umbrella on the train and I went to the train conductor guy and I asked him if they could get it for me. The reason I liked this umbrella a lot is because Japan has very high-quality goods and this was the only umbrella that didn't open up backwards in the wind whenever it got really windy and rainy. And I really wanted that umbrella back. So he actually called all of his friends <laugh>, who worked at like different train stations and he tried to track down my umbrella and then I was like, no, no, it's really okay. Didn't mean to cause a disturbance. He actually asked for my phone number to follow up with me about the umbrella. He did call me three days later and they couldn't find it. But that would never happen, I don't think anywhere else in the world. I mean that is just a perfect example of how nice the people are in Japan. To complete strangers, to complete foreigners like me. So number one nice people.  

Kristin:    00:16:14    The next thing I noticed when I woke up the first morning in Japan, uh, well first of all, how small the hotel rooms are.  

Kristin:    00:16:22    And so, um, this is the smallest room I've ever seen <laugh>. But the second thing I noticed after that was how quiet and clean it is. Like you would never expect to be in the center of Tokyo, one of the biggest cities in the world. And to be able to just hear birds chirping and the rustling of the breeze and the trees.  

Kristin:    00:16:49    That was very surprising. It's just how it is in downtown Tokyo. I mean it's kind of like that throughout the whole country, but it is kind of a country of paradoxes and contrasts, which we're gonna talk about in a bit. So I remember vlogging actually cuz I was making travel vlogs at that time. So I'm walking down the streets totally quiet and just marveling at that. And then also there's all of these parks and zen gardens everywhere where people will be just sitting and appreciating the silence, appreciating the nature, meditating fountains and beautiful trees. And that's just everywhere throughout the city. And so I really loved that. So quiet, so well manicured. And then of course in the springtime there's just cherry blossoms everywhere and it's just so beautiful. And so I I, I had pictured Tokyo as being this really crazy technologically advanced city kind of like Hong Kong, but it actually wasn't like that at all.  

Kristin:    00:17:49    All even though it is a massive city, it doesn't have that same kind of energy that you might find in other large cities in Asia. The third thing I noticed was how much Japanese people love to eat, also the reverence they have for their food. So actually this is one of those things that there's a lot of contrast in. So when I first moved to Tokyo, the first day that I got there, I went to a green tea ceremony that they were having at my coworking space and I was blown away by this. Never have I seen anyone make tea with such a ritual and such care and such attention to detail. And it was like watching poetry or something, I don't know, we're all like dressed in kimonos and it was an amazing experience. And I remember asking the girl who was making the tea, oh, when did you learn this thinking? How long had she been doing it for? Because there was this whole kind of dance to making the tea. And she responded, oh no, I'm still learning.  

Kristin:    00:18:58    My American mindset was like, oh, you acquire a skill or you learn a skill and then that you, you know how to do it. And her perspective was, I have not learned this yet, nor will I ever learn it. It's like that concept of kaizen or continuous improvement that this dedication to the craft, whatever it is, whatever job a Japanese person has, they have such dedication to it. And of course I can't speak for everyone, but I saw this at all different levels of the workforce in all different industries, whether it was a business person or somebody making sushi or making the tea. And every sector of society you see people with such care focused, like focused on making the perfect cup of coffee just for the sake of dedicating all of their attention to that task at hand. And I was just blown away by that.  

Kristin:    00:19:57    So they have this reverence for the food and the food is very beautiful, like it's very beautifully presented and packaged and well, there's a lot of packaging, I'll talk about that in a second. But then on the other hand there's also this like fast food culture. So you have this very thoughtful, slow-paced, balanced consumption of the food where people are really savoring the food that they're eating and really excited about it. Like lines out of the restaurants to go to the popular restaurants and you know, taking their time to have the tea ceremony. I saw, I saw these girls in Kyoto once that stuck out. There was a group of girls that went to the bakery. I was working in this coffee shop, you know, remote worker. So I'm like working from the coffee shop. These girls come in and it was like they had this plan for the day to get this big pastry and they all got one of the pastries and they're like having so much fun eating this pastry, taking photos of each other, taking selfies, laughing, holding it up and you know, just being really excited about their food and I love that.  

Kristin:    00:21:06    But then on the other hand there's this fast food culture of seven elevens, which are open 24/7 and vending machines on the streets and automated restaurants where you just go in and like order from a computer and the food's ready or the sushi trains that are going around. So I thought that was a really interesting contrast where on one hand, um, you have people really taking their time savoring the food and on the other hand it's like grab and go. So this 7-Eleven convenience store culture deserves its own number because the people in Japan, foreigners, tourists, locals alike, they'll eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the convenience stores. And I don't think I've seen that anywhere else. Like of course there's convenient stores in every country, but you wouldn't go there for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And some of them are like really decked out where you can just like sit and hang out and eat your food in there.  

Kristin:    00:22:00    Um, but there's so much variety in the types of food and it's actually really affordable to eat there, um, compared to most of the restaurants. So if you go to Japan, you'll definitely notice this and you'll save a lot of money if you too eat all of your meals at the convenience store and it kind of becomes like this fun game of trying to use Google Translate app to translate the package of food that you're buying to even know what it is <laugh> that you're about to eat. And sometimes it doesn't work so you just end up like surprise and um, but you know, but you eat it. Anyway. There's this whole debate on like which convenience store is the best. And I'm personally a fan of Lawson. Um, some of my friends are on the side of 7-Eleven, but you know, you be the judge, you have to go to Japan, try the convenience stores out, decide for yourself which vibe and which culture of which store is your jam. And if you've been to Japan and you have a strong opinion on this, let me know when the comments below and we'll debate  

Kristin:    00:23:00    These beverages. They're called strong 9% alcohol and they're less than $2. That's a great bargain. So when you come to Japan, make sure you go to one of the 18 convenience stores on every block. Get yourself some snacks, maybe some french fries and a can and get yourself some strong alcohol. Ooh, cherry blossom.  

Kristin:    00:23:26    Oh, uh, one other thing on the food. There's so much packaging around the food, it actually like gives me anxiety because I'm the person who buys like reusable produce bags because I don't even wanna use the, the plastic bags for my produce at the grocery store. So it really bothered me how everything is wrapped in plastic. Every single thing like a toothpick will be wrapped in plastic. Every fork knife, like basically a package of food that you would buy at a convenience store is kind of like origami <laugh>, but instead of paper, it's plastic. And it just seems like a lot of waste and I don't know why that is. Someone told me that they burn all of the waste, I don't know. But um, it does seem quite wasteful, but everything is very clean and sterile so it makes sense that they would have things packaged that way, but I just found it to be pretty weird, number five.  

Kristin:    00:24:18    For the fifth thing is how unhealthy the food is. So as I mentioned, the food in Japan is very appetizing, very appealing, very beautiful. Um, like I had a popsicle once that had like cherry blossom flowers in it, and like everything looks very nice, but they also eat really unhealthy. So when I went to Japan, I thought that I was just going to eat super healthy there. Like I'd be drinking green tea and eating raw fish all the time, but really most of the food is full of salt, fat, sugar. I mean it's like that. What is that? Uh, Netflix sh show Salt fat, acid heat. It's like that. I don't know how the people aren't obese because they really do just eat a lot of sugar and fat and salt and soy. So I was really surprised by that because I expected the opposite.  

Kristin:    00:25:13    And actually while I was living in Japan, I gained 10 pounds <laugh>. So, um, part of that was going out. We're gonna talk about the nightlife in a minute, but um, yeah, if, if you're going to Japan then be aware, like definitely indulge cuz there's so many amazing restaurants and and you'll be like exploring these narrow streets of whichever city, your town that you're in. Tokyo especially Kyoto especially really everywhere throughout Japan, there will just be like this hole in the wall restaurant with amazing food. And so it's hard not to indulge, but there's so many tempting things to eat and then all of like the beautiful desserts and things are displayed in the windows everywhere. So yeah, um, for some reason the locals look really healthy. But as a foreigner I just like immediately gained weight. Another thing that I didn't expect was how bad the internet was.  

Kristin:    00:26:04    The internet speeds are really slow. The sim cards are super expensive. I think I paid 30 or $40 to get like one or two gigs of data and there's no free wifi anywhere. Now, maybe this has changed in the past year, but when I was there, even at Starbucks, like anywhere you go, you have to get a login to use the wifi and the free public wifi, if you can find it at any stores, is very slow. So I spent a lot of money on sim cards, international data packages, just so that I could work from places because it was so hard to connect. And then the seventh thing I noticed was it's expensive. So not only is the internet expensive, but gosh, like everything was expensive there except skiing. Actually, if you're used to skiing or snowboarding in the US and Canada, the lift tickets are like a fraction of the price.  

Kristin:    00:27:02    So a fourth or a third of the price of going to like Colorado or British Columbia. So that was the main way I saved money in Japan, was on my Lyft ticket, but everything else was pretty expensive. I did a cost of living video on Japan if you wanna check it out. And of course if you're living there like a local and you're living there long term, you can get your cost of living down. But if you're just passing through as like a tourist or a foreigner or a digital nomad or an expat for a few months, like it can be pretty pricey. The trains, the flights within the country, very expensive. The internet, the rent prices, unless you're getting a long-term rental are really high. The salons weirdly, to get a manicure or a pedicure could cost like a hundred dollars. And maybe I was going to the wrong places, but I really couldn't find anywhere in Tokyo that was less than like $70 or $80.  

Kristin:    00:27:54    And also some of the food things that you wouldn't think would be really expensive, Japan is famous for having very expensive fruit. So they'll have these display cases of strawberries and melons and it can be eight or $9 for one strawberry or more. I think I, I even saw some melons for $80. They'll be in these beautiful cases and you would never pay that much for a piece of fruit <laugh> in other countries. But for some reason in Japan, fruit is really expensive. I mean you can still get cheap fruit too, but they have special stores with luxury fruit and I did buy one of the strawberries just to try it. I mean it tasted really good, but it's like a splurge. Another thing that I didn't really expect but I really appreciated about Japan is the amount of nature that's there. So of course when you think of Japan, you think of Tokyo and you think of some of the big cities and I knew that there were mountains and beaches and everything in between, but I didn't realize how diverse the landscape was and just how beautiful it was.  

Kristin:    00:29:00    I mean there's rivers and waterfalls and volcanoes and temples everywhere and it's just really beautiful and the people really enjoy the nature. So especially when the weather gets warmer, you'll see people outside just enjoying the day in big groups, sitting under trees, eating their beautiful food, eating their beautiful desserts, and just enjoying each other's company and enjoying the weather, enjoying the parks. There's a few places around the world where that kind of lifestyle really sticks out to me. It kind of reminded me of Southern California where the weather is good and people are outside all the time, but instead of highways and beaches, it's like zen gardens and parks and temples. I don't know how many temples there are in Japan, I'm gonna look it up, but it's a lot. And next up I wrote down sense of humor. There's that movie Lost in Translation that I thought of a lot when I was there, even though very few locals in Japan speak English and I certainly don't speak Japanese, I still felt like I could communicate with people because we communicate through so many different ways other than spoken word, there's facial expressions and mannerisms.  

Kristin:    00:30:15    So I did notice at restaurants, especially the sushi guy or uh, bartenders, they all had like a really good sense of humor. And so even though Japan has this image of being like a very hardworking culture, they also like to have fun. Which brings me to my next point, the work hard play hard culture. So in Japanese there's this word called karoshi, which is death by overwork. And there's definitely a problem with high-stress, high-pressure environments at work and people tend to let off steam by going out and partying, <laugh> and drinking. So it's definitely a problem there. And I've heard that they're like testing out four-hour work weeks and trying to really reign that in. But it was quite striking to see this contrast between how hard people are working and then how hard people are partying. So actually a really big drinking culture there in a really big nightlife culture, the nightlife is crazy.  

Kristin:    00:31:16    You might just find yourself eating ramen noodles at like 9:00 AM <laugh> before getting home from the club. So I was surprised that there was so much clubbing, like techno music. And definitely, more than once with my coworking digital nomad friends, we ended up coming home at 10:00 AM. Another thing that I definitely didn't expect was how good the dating scene was, especially in Tokyo. It's just a melting pot of people from all around the world. Not only is Japan very safe, which I'll talk about in a minute, but dating as a western woman, especially a solo traveler can be really difficult because there's the safety issue, there's uh, the cultural differences, there's typically language barriers. And so yeah, I was just really surprised at how easy it was to date. I went on more dates in Japan than I do in like New York or something. And then another thing I wrote down that's kind of random, um, but if you like to exercise you'll be particularly weirded out by this, was that there was really nowhere to work out.  

Kristin:    00:32:24    Um, so one of the things that I love about the United States is how many different types of exercise classes, gyms, and things that you can do. I mean, there's boot camp, there's uh, spin classes, there's bar classes, there's like every, anything you can think of in the US you can find, but it's not like that in other countries. Maybe a CrossFit class or like basic gyms and maybe some yoga classes and things like that. Side note, I think the Netherlands in Canada are probably the two other countries that I've traveled to have the best workout classes. But Japan is not that country. So not only are workout classes not really available, but they're not available to foreigners. And I don't actually know what the story is behind this, but there's kind of like this discrimination against foreigners when it comes to working out. Maybe that was another reason why I wasn't at my healthiest while living in Tokyo because there's so many tempting, amazing foods in the culinary scene.  

Kristin:    00:33:24    The exercise options are pretty limited and then there's also the nightlife factor and the drinking. And so when you combine all of those things together, it's really not a good recipe for staying healthy and staying in shape, especially if you're just passing through. And then another thing that's not really weird, but it's something that I definitely didn't know before I lived in Japan, is how safe it is. Japan has ranked at the top of the global Peace index many years in a row coming in ninth out of 163 countries in 2020, the same year Berkshire Hathaway rated Tokyo as the safest city in the world. So if you're looking for a safe place to solo travel, especially as a female, Japan is an ideal destination. Thank you <laugh>. Thank you for the food <laugh>. I hope you found my insights about living in Japan as a foreigner to be quite interesting.  

Outro:    00:34:24    And hopefully it puts Japan on your radar if you haven't been there. And hopefully, you had a bit of a laugh if you have been there or lived there or if you're living there now, as I mentioned, if you want to see the visuals that go along with this video, you can watch it on my YouTube channel Traveling with Kristin, just search for Living in Japan as an American. And I'll also link to it in the show notes. And if you want to check out those furnished apartments with flexible lease terms all across United States and nearly 400 cities, I'll leave my referral link to Landing apartments in the show notes as well. And if you just wanna take a quick trip to Japan and visit for a few weeks, then you can visit there with Hacker Paradise that has group trips to Japan. So you could work online and travel at the same time and you can get $100 off your first trip by using our referral link in the show notes as well. Have a great week and see you again next week.