{"id":139,"date":"2024-02-02T18:29:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T09:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/?p=139"},"modified":"2024-02-04T23:38:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T14:38:00","slug":"little-differences-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/2024\/02\/02\/little-differences-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Little differences, part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">So many little surprises that keep popping up, almost every day. It&#8217;s a delight. (Continued <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/2024\/01\/24\/little-differences-part-2\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"104\">from last time&#8230;<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Japanese people are exceedingly polite. You will hear <em>arigato gozaimasu<\/em> (which, to my untrained ear, typically sounds more like &#8220;are-EE-gah-toh-DYE-mass-soo&#8221;) many times daily. I still need to learn how to say &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry&#8221;\/&#8221;excuse me&#8221; since my copious and corpulent Western body is certain to cause some disasters that have yet to occur.<br><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>There is a definite predilection towards collecting things here, whether it&#8217;s collecting stamps from rail stations, pages of calligraphy from temples or shrines, or catching all the capsules in a collection.<br><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When it comes to retail, in the Western world we really don&#8217;t see much beyond ground level (in bigger cities like New York or Chicago, and to a larger extent in non-American metropolises like Montr\u00e9al and Mexico City, there are some exceptions like basement\/subway concourse-level tunnels or second-story mezzanine-type spaces), but space is at a premium here and the onus seems to be on the customer to figure out where to go. For example, there was a <em>tonkatsu<\/em> restaurant that I wanted to go to for dinner tonight, and it took me twenty minutes of searching based on photos on Google Maps to find the spot (turns out it was down an inconspicuous stairway)&#8230; and there was <em>still<\/em> an hour-long wait.<br><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are almost never paper towels in bathrooms. Hand dryers can sometimes be scarce too.<br><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There is no Diet Coke (or Coke Light, as it&#8217;s called in some places), but you can get Coke Zero&#8211;though typically only in supermarkets or convenience stores, and not frequently in restaurants. Prepare accordingly!<br><br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anyone can enjoy a visit to Tokyo, I believe, but you&#8217;ll have a much better time if you don&#8217;t have food hang-ups, and you&#8217;re willing to try new things, even if they seem &#8220;gross&#8221; or unconventional. I look at it this way&#8211;the Japanese culture has existed for literally <em>thousands<\/em> of years, which means that the foods they eat here have been &#8220;normal&#8221; for an extremely long time. It&#8217;s not my place to question those choices; in fact, my attitude is that if people here enjoy things like, say, grilled chicken hearts or pork tongue, then I might, too. (I do, in fact, as it turns out, for both of those items!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">So many little surprises that keep popping up, almost every day. It&#8217;s a delight. (Continued <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/2024\/01\/24\/little-differences-part-2\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"104\">from last time&#8230;<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Japanese people are exceedingly polite. You will hear <em>arigato gozaimasu<\/em> (which, to my untrained ear, typically sounds more like &#8220;are-EE-gah-toh-DYE-mass-soo&#8221;) many times daily. I still need to learn how to say &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry&#8221;\/&#8221;excuse me&#8221; since my copious and corpulent Western body is certain to cause some disasters that have yet to occur.<br \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/2024\/02\/02\/little-differences-part-3\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Little differences, part 3&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":18087,"featured_media":154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32,29,22,24],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-collections","tag-environment","tag-food-drink","tag-social-interactions","entry"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/files\/2024\/02\/AdobeStock_124688878-600x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/files\/2024\/02\/AdobeStock_124688878-600x600.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Ryan Eanes","author_link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/author\/tul72118\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18087"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/tujeanes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}