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Helpful Facts About Japan
Apr. 22nd, 2004 01:56 am1) Bread comes in slices that are half an inch thick. The average "loaf" (and I use the term loosely) consists between four and SIX WHOLE SLICES. Other sizes of bread include thin (which is several molecules wide) and wide (which is a full inch wide). This is because the Japanese are crazy.
2) Washers and dryers are only names. The washer is more like a "soaker", and the dryer is more like a "rotator". Neither actually performs the same function they do in America. You will frequently wear wet clothes in Japan, and it will cost you a lot of money -- $2 per wash, $1 per ineffective dry, the latter of which requires a minimum of three full cycles to be considered wearable -- to do so.
3) Everyone advertising anything in Japan is standing out on the streets calling at you as you go by with baskets full of little tissue packets. They will hand you these tissue packets as you go by. TAKE THEM. Because you will shortly learn that in Japan, toilet paper has not been discovered yet.
4) Also, toilets. Many public places have holes in the ground that serve a similar function... But they are poor substitutes. The Liquids of Mystery all around it will make you reconsider not wetting yourself.
5) There will be many cute Japanese guys around, who are often athletic and funny. They will not be interested in you -- they want the cute Japanese girls. The cute Japanese girls will be interested in every fascinating and nonfascinating foreign man they meet, just to spite everyone.
6) Public transportation is, on occasion, helpfully translated for the mentally retarded and/or lobotimized. The announcement on the bus line is "Kansai Gaidai desu," which seems pretty obvious to me, because Kansai Gaidai is the name of my university, so that's where I get off. But they follow it with a condescending English-speaker saying, "This is Kansai Gaidai," as if you can't look out the window and notice yourself. Seriously, if you're living in Japan, and you don't know that "Kansai Gaidai desu" means "This is Kansai Gaidai," you don't deserve to be allowed off the bus. You should just have to stay on, going past the university again and again until you either figure it out, or starve to death.
2) Washers and dryers are only names. The washer is more like a "soaker", and the dryer is more like a "rotator". Neither actually performs the same function they do in America. You will frequently wear wet clothes in Japan, and it will cost you a lot of money -- $2 per wash, $1 per ineffective dry, the latter of which requires a minimum of three full cycles to be considered wearable -- to do so.
3) Everyone advertising anything in Japan is standing out on the streets calling at you as you go by with baskets full of little tissue packets. They will hand you these tissue packets as you go by. TAKE THEM. Because you will shortly learn that in Japan, toilet paper has not been discovered yet.
4) Also, toilets. Many public places have holes in the ground that serve a similar function... But they are poor substitutes. The Liquids of Mystery all around it will make you reconsider not wetting yourself.
5) There will be many cute Japanese guys around, who are often athletic and funny. They will not be interested in you -- they want the cute Japanese girls. The cute Japanese girls will be interested in every fascinating and nonfascinating foreign man they meet, just to spite everyone.
6) Public transportation is, on occasion, helpfully translated for the mentally retarded and/or lobotimized. The announcement on the bus line is "Kansai Gaidai desu," which seems pretty obvious to me, because Kansai Gaidai is the name of my university, so that's where I get off. But they follow it with a condescending English-speaker saying, "This is Kansai Gaidai," as if you can't look out the window and notice yourself. Seriously, if you're living in Japan, and you don't know that "Kansai Gaidai desu" means "This is Kansai Gaidai," you don't deserve to be allowed off the bus. You should just have to stay on, going past the university again and again until you either figure it out, or starve to death.