Naivety

 Some of the Facebook groups I'm on are for people who want to travel to Japan or want to move here. It's interesting to see the various ideas that people have about Japan and life here.

A few themes that come up over and over again are how safe Japan is, how clean it is, and how polite the people are.

Most of the posts paint Japan as a paradise, and it's a nice place to live but not a perfect place to live.

Is Japan safe?  After the awful stabbings in England last week and the subsequent riots, I would have to say that compared to the UK, at the moment it is safer here. But it isn't crime-free.  There are crimes, petty theft, and shoplifting are on the increase.  Some elderly people who have no family, no money, and very little pension commit crimes so they can go to jail, there they will have a place to sleep, 3 meals a day, and medical care. They'll also have a community to help them.  It's a sad state of society when this happens.

Crimes such as murders seem to be very dramatic and make headline news for days and sometimes weeks.  The other year a young man came to the city where we live, he went to an elderly lady's house killed her, and then went to another prefecture. He had no connection to this city or this lady. he left no real forensic evidence. The police would never have caught him but he turned himself in. He was a young man in his 20s, studying to be a pharmacist. He had his whole life before him, I can't fathom these kinds of crimes. So senseless, the lady's family is destroyed but also the suspect has destroyed his life and his family as well.  There again even when there is some motive I don't understand the taking of life!

Is Japan clean?  Kind of.  I've seen litter, and I've even asked people to take home their obento packages that they left on the ground.  There are a lot of vending machines with small trash boxes that get over full very quickly.  I haven't seen fly-tipping which seems to be a big problem in parts of the UK.  It is difficult and expensive to get rid of trash.  We are still clearing out the other house and one problem is that our IDs are for another city and prefecture, even though it's only a 30-minute drive.  We can't take trash to the local incinerator until we register in that city.  For large items like the fridge and washing machine, we have to contact the city hall and pay for the items to be taken. One good system is that in some stores they will take your old machines or furniture for a small price.  We've had problems with old bikes, I had no idea how to get rid of them, one of my husband's friends told Mikey about a recycle scrap metal place that would take them and pay you.  We made a bit of money from metal things hanging around the houses and yards!

Are people polite?  Again not so straightforward as it seems. Japanese tend to divide others into groups, you are part of my group, on the inside, so I can use speech that is not so polite, and others who are outside my group, therefore I must be polite to you.  My mother-in-law was an expert at this, talking to people outside of her family she was polite and deferential, toward us she was demanding and talked to us in a very impolite way. She never used please or thank you toward family members. If you ask a Japanese person for help, for instance, by asking for directions, they will go out of their way to help as you are outside their group.  The typical Japanese person might also feel that they have to show the best side of Japan, as a representative of the country.  I'm not sure younger people feel this so keenly but middle age people seem to.

What has this to do with naivety?  When I read these posts of how safe, clean, and polite it is in Japan I want to go into keyboard warrior mode and correct these people. I feel they are so stupid for not realizing that there are problems here, maybe better hidden than in other countries but still problems.  One time I decided to look at the profiles of one person who was writing one of these posts.  He was very young and had a fresh outlook on life in general.  I realized that these posts are by younger people who see the best things in Japan.

This led me to remembering my first few years here. I had been in Japan for just over a year when I realized that I hadn't seen a police car. I mentioned this to Hisao. He told me that Japan was so safe that the police didn't have patrol cars, only bicycles!  I believed him until 3 years later I saw a police car!  My husband thought it was very funny that I believed him. This story also gives my kids a good laugh. I think we lose that sense of naivety as we grow older and experience more things. Is it a good thing to always see things clearly or is a sense of wonder and being a bit naive a less stressful way of living?

And of course, cats! This time Sam! He decided to lie in front of the TV. I don't mind but I was watching a travel video of a place near here that I would like to visit. the video was in Japanese with English subtitles. Sam was blocking the subtitles, so I had to try and understand what was being said. I think I understood about 80%.

Sam blocking the subtitles.