Hot Rant
culture4 min read
JAPAN HAS FOUR SEASONS, AND BY GOD YOU WILL BE TOLD
Japan's four seasons obsession is a national delusion dressed up as poetry. No, mate, you did not invent autumn. The rest of the planet also has weather.
The Archive
The unwritten rules, the tatemae performances, the kuuki you'd better be reading. Field notes from inside the most polite hostage situation in the world.
Japan's four seasons obsession is a national delusion dressed up as poetry. No, mate, you did not invent autumn. The rest of the planet also has weather.
Japanese passive-aggressive tutting is a national discipline performed by old men in stations. Here's what happens when you turn round and ask one of them why he's doing it.
The 2,000-yen note is legal tender printed by a sovereign nation, and yet the Japanese cash economy treats it like a counterfeit handed over by a deranged tourist. A field report on the most polite refusal of your own money you will ever experience.
Japan fans cleaning up litter at the World Cup again, and the internet melting down about it again. The Japanese stadium clean-up tradition is a performance, and you absolute mugs keep buying the ticket.
Every typhoon in Japan gets a multi-day media build-up like a national emergency, then arrives in Tokyo as light fucking drizzle. A field report on the country's favourite ritual of collective weather panic.
The white knight of Japan: the foreigner who appears, sword drawn, the instant you say anything factually accurate yet negative about Japan. A field guide to the most insufferable expat archetype going.
There is exactly one Japanese vending machine near me that sells Dr Pepper. Was. There was exactly one. Now there are four rows of Coke and a hole in my soul the shape of a 500ml can.
Japanese office air conditioning runs on a calendar, not a thermostat. It is 34 degrees in May, the salarymen are dissolving in their suits, and the cooling season doesn't start until a date some committee invented in 1974.
Japanese rubbish sorting is a part-time job you never applied for, complete with a fourteen-page laminated manual and an obaasan stationed to judge your every yoghurt pot. Welcome to the gomi station, where guessing wrong gets you publicly shamed.
The broken English conversation in Japan that nobody asked for, performed by the gentleman who has decided your nationality is his business. Speak fluent Japanese back and watch it change absolutely nothing.