These first two days in Japan have gone by really quickly. Joylani’s brother, Josh, met us at the train station in Sendai, the city where he teaches. He showed us around the small town during the afternoon and then we met up with some of his friends for dinner. We got around to exploring today, since josh works from noon ‘til ten. We hopped on the local shinkansen (bullet train), called the Tsubame Express, and headed south to Kagoshima city. I’m not sure how far it is, but the Tsubame gets up to about 260km/hr and it only takes 12 minutes. Kagoshima City is the capital of its namesake prefecture and is quite a pleasant city. It sits in a bay and is overlooked by the active Sakurajima volcano. We didn’t do too much there, other than stroll and observe the town. It was our first glimpse of real Japanese city, given that Josh’s town Sendai is only a 100,000 people and spread out over a large area.

Although we haven’t done too much yet, Japan is really interesting. Its my second time here, but there’s a lot of things that still seem new. The tiny cars, automated everything, and the ubiquitous vending machines that sell everything from sodas to beer to cigarettes to hot bowls of ramen. I do remember that Japan seemed like the future and it does even more so now. Its not futuristic in a Shanghai-funky-architecture sense, but in that everything is designed and done in an intelligent and orderly way. Our visa stamp was a barcode (and we’ve learned that the barcodes on everything from billboards to products can be photographed with your mobile phone and you’ll then be taken to that website!), saving a lot of work and waste. The trains run on-time down to the minute. People don’t litter and will carry their garbage until they can throw it away. I see people putting their cigarettes out on the ground, but then carrying the butt until they find a trash bin. I’ve even seen several people pick up scraps of litter randomly and throw it away. Perhaps its presumptuous for me to say that its like the future- perhaps things in the US will not be nicer in the future, but I hope so.

The other thing that’s quickly noticeable here is the ritualistic behavior of the people. The hellos, thank you’s, and goodbye’s everytime you walk into a store. It is highly systematic, yet in a friendly and polite way. Far from feeling like we’re interacting with robots, Japanese seem very friendly and helpful. I definitely feel that people here respect one another (train timeliness, litter, etiquette) and I think that’s where the extreme courtesy comes from, although we still aren’t attuned to it all yet.