What's Tony Thinking

Five First Impressions from Japan

After a short, but lovely, lay-over with friends in Honolulu, we flew to Osaka, Japan yesterday. From Osaka, we went on to the major regional city in south of Japan, Fukuoka.

Fukuoka is a port and industrial city of 1.7 million on Japan’s southern-most island of Kyushu. We are here because it is the nearest major airport to the jumping off point for our walking pilgrimage on Kyushu. That adventure begins tomorrow. (Photo, by Linda, at the Kushida Shrine in Fukuoka.)

It’s our first trip to Japan, so I’m pretty much of a neophyte. Having served a predominately Japanese-American congregation in Honolulu, some years ago, is the main introduction I’ve had to Japanese culture.

Here are five initial impressions:

Social etiquette is a big thing in Japan. From removing your shoes before entering a living space to bowing to other people to express respect and appreciation, there’s a level of social awareness — manners — that is striking, and refreshing.

Related to this, Japan seems a place where fitting in is more important than standing out, which is sort of the opposite of the U.S. at this point. Perhaps that observation verges on a stereotype, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate. Maybe this reflects being an island nation, where you have to learn to live with each other rather than moving to wherever the frontier may be.

Along these lines, I’ve not seen any cars with the blackout windows that have become common in the U.S. Some cars have tinted windows, but not the darkened, opaque ones that suggest, at least to me, a certain menace. As a pedestrian, I appreciate this because you can tell if a driver sees you and you sometimes communicate with one another via hand gestures or facial expressions.

A fourth impression, people are by and large pretty trim or height/weight proportionate here. There isn’t the widespread obesity now so common in the U.S. I wonder if this is reflected in Japan’s per capita health care costs? You’d think so.

Fifth, despite Fukuoka being a large city and an industrial one, it is relatively quiet, and we are in the city centre, the area known as Hakata. It is home to a number of beautiful shrines and temples. Not sure why it’s so quiet for a big city except that cars here are generally smaller and traffic moves slower. I don’t think I’ve seen any pick-up trucks yet. And heavy equipment and dump trucks are infrequent on city streets, at least where we are. Have only heard a siren once.

Nor do I think the relative quiet is because this is a big tourist area. Fukuoka clearly gets some tourists (I noted a sign on a club that said, “Foreigners Welcome, Let’s Drink”), but it’s not on the standard tourist itinerary the way that, say, Tokyo, Kyoto or Hiroshima are. Maybe it goes back to the thing about fitting in rather than standing out. For example, I haven’t noticed any cars or motorcycles outfitted to make a lot of noise seemingly to announce one’s presence and power. Again, kind of a nice change from what we’re used to.

Tomorrow we will move by train across Kyushu to a peninsula on the northwest part of the island and begin our five day walking trip. Not too arduous. Most days we walk about five miles. The trip is dotted with Buddhist temples, traditional teahouses and inns along the way.