Thoughts about Japan

It has been only 5 months since we left Japan and we get to resume our last days in the country and why we left rather quickly. Our original plan was to stay for the whole length of our one year visa and maybe even extend, but the truth is that we did not push through the culture shock that inevitably came.

First of all, we want to mention that we enjoyed our time in Japan A LOT and we are super happy to have spend nine month in this beautiful country. But what had impressed us in the beginning:the lack of chaos, the food, the humility of the people increasingly made us more and more uncomfortable.

It all started when we wanted to pay our taxes for our car. At that time, we were already living in RokkyPokky for a few weeks and in the Hida region. We found the tax agency of the region and as so often the answer to our quest was that it is ‘maybe not possible’. Which means a clear no, but in-between the lines. As we did not have any other choice than figuring it out on the spot (or not paying our taxes), we persisted. The three workers brainstormed what to do in this very unsual and tricky situation – we usually would get a QR code to our adress in Hokkaido which would make payment very easy or we would have to go to the tax agency in Sapporo – both not an option as we were thousands of Kilometer south and didn’t actually have the adress anymore. Japanese do not get many holidays. Which means they are never far from home more than a few days in a row. The system is therefore not at all working for people like us, even though everything is done online. Considering that there is a fair amount of working holiday people, whose plans often include to travel the country after their working period, we would have expected the bureaucratic aspect to be adapted. After the workers called the Sapporo office on our request and brainstormed another 20 minutes with them without finding a solution, we suggested that the Sapporo office just sends them an email with our QR code. Another long call followed and after one hour of translating and us finding the solution to their system, we finally got to pay our taxes… This is were we started to get annoyed. Whenever something does not fit in their regular ways, the immediate answer is that it’s not possible and common sense often doesn’t seem to exist. Multiple people then get onto the same problem, but without actually finding a solution, as simple as it might be.

The more we got towards the touristic regions of Kyoto and Osaka, the trickier it got to live in the van. Often we got woken up by police in the night. They were very friendly and just wanted to check that everything was alright, taking our data and advised to be careful with our belongings, but still, we were a bit tired of getting woken up. The food that we loooooved and love again, was starting to get boring. We still enjoyed eating Ramen but the closer we were to the touristic hubs, the harder it became to find a place to park the van for the night and cook our own food. We ended up in restaurants more often and in the end, going out to eat wasn’t pleasant anymore. We were relying on libraries to charge our devices and surf the internet. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to do so, so charging our laptops felt like doing something criminal and many libraries didn’t even have Wifi. Some days, when it was rainy and we wanted to do research or write the blog, we had to stop by multiple libraries to get Internet. We had the feeling that there was a huge discrepancy between the modernity of the country, with the newest high-tech systems, and the lack of simple things, like public internet.

In the end, these little issues as well as the increasing humid heat made us feel uncomfortable and we decided to leave Japan. But first, we had a bit of a plan.

After this, Honza still wanted to hike the 88 Temple trail in Shikoku. At that point, I was already longing for a hammock, a book and a bit of chaos. I spontaneously booked a flight to Thailand with the goal of waiting there for Honza to finish his trail. I arrived in Chiang Mai in the heat and the chaos I had so missed ( I literally had tears in my eyes when a pick-up with a whole family in the open trunk passed my cab). After only spending 10 days in Pai and eating my body weight in Thai food, Honza decided to leave the trail for another time in our lifes.

Now, this article might give a negative view of the country. We want to emphasize on the fact, that this is just our personal experience of a few weeks at the end of our trip, living a lifestyle that is unusual for Japanese and therefore doesn’t fit their expectations and solutions. Also, if we had had the plan to stay for a long time, we would have pushed through this culture shock and probably would have returned to loving the positive sides of the country. As long as you are following the crowd, the system is well thought through. The food is absolutely delicious, the people so friendly, polite and calm, it is safe and the history interesting and well preserved. Even with the language barrier we made good friends and in the north people were curious about us and we communicated with hands and feet, laughing a lot. We absolutely love the onsen culture, going to soak in hot volcanic water, the social aspect of it as important as the washing rituals. We definitely recommend visiting Japan, maybe doing a ski season or workaways to get in touch with the locals and we will definitely go back one day, to visit the places we missed. But for the timing being, our time in Japan was over.