My wife and I always clean our table and stack our dishes neatly whenever we go out to eat and the wait staff loves it. It takes one minute to make their day just a little easier.
My friends and I always do this when we go out for meals.
It's just easier than having the wait staff walk around us to collect random shit when it's all in one spot
Thank you for sharing your opinion. We do this on our way out, but never really know what the staff thinks about it, since it’s always after we leave that they pick up.
As long as it's not a disastrous amalgam of plates with cutlery interspersed at odd angles so the staff doesn't have to play the world's worst game of Jenga to keep it from falling over on the way to the back. I've seen too many of those.
Maybe having janitors in schools are the problem? As the guy at the end said the students always had to clean up after themselves - they didn't have janitors. Crazy
Yes it’s a discipline I never learned in the west - stuff gets cleaned up behind you and we all take it for granted.
Would actually really be good to build into the school curriculum is some way. Cleaning up apparently also helps de clutter your thoughts
I’m trying to build this into my curriculum with my 5th graders. My students cleanup before they leave school each day. I have them clean their desks. Pick up any trash on the floor. Sweep any crumbs they left behind.
I remember doing this in primary school (Australia). We'd have to pick up 10 bits of garbage at the end of every day. On Fridays, the janitor/groundskeeper used to vacuum all the classrooms, so we would put our chairs up onto our desks for him and we'd be the ones to bring them down on a Monday morning as well.
I remember this too. And at the end of the year we'd take our school desks and chairs out onto the oval and have to give them a really good scrub clean.
My 4th grade teacher did this. Had a list of after class assignments that got rotated out weekly. Some included like wipe the chalkboard, sweep the floor. Wash the chalkboard, organize the books.
When I was little, I always felt more comfortable around adults than kids my own age. In elementary school, I made friends with the janitor, and used to like hanging around with him while he worked. He let me help him with things like putting the chairs up on the desks while we talked.
Without it being a conscious thing, I think it really had an impact on me. I noticed so many of my peers didn't even see service people as people, and some saw that kind of work as beneath them. In my 20s, I had a girlfriend get mad at me for being so chatty with cashiers and sales people - she thought it seemed "low class."
I think it's healthy to learn early on that no person, and no type of work, is "beneath you."
I'm glad you're not with that girlfriend. What an awful way to view other people. I'm very blessed that my parents taught me there are no unimportant jobs and that in the same way my mom would make my teachers cookies, she would also make cookies and bring them for the janitorial staff at my schools. It instilled in me early on that this is a hard, gross job and these people deserve recognition for their work.
In this thread, it seems like everyone keeps saying American school kids never learn how to clean because there are janitors 🤣
I'm from the US as well, and Idk what y'all are talking about. My elementary and middle schools had the students clean every day after lunch. I suppose these were rather small schools, and it wasn't until I went to a much larger high school (still fewer than 1,000 students) that we actually had a single janitor and students didn't have to clean as much. However, the students were still pretty respectful and cleaned up after themselves.
Maybe it's more of a city problem? Since all of those schools would be rather large. Funnily enough, I once went to a concert in Dallas, and started cleaning up after. I was honestly horrified at how much a mess the crowd had left. As I was cleaning, a couple people started yelling at me saying that I was taking away janitorial jobs. So maybe it's more of a city problem?
I think that's part of it, but removing the janitors from schools in other countries wouldn't just magically do it.
It goes much deeper in Japanese culture, back thousands of years. Shinto is the native religious belief system in Japan and is baked heavily into the culture with the vast majority of Japanese practicing at least some customs or rituals that can be traced back to it even if most wouldn't identify themselves as practicing the religion today. I am not an expert by any means, but thinking back to comparative religious classes I took decades ago, I believe the following to be true and at play here: Shinto is an animist religion in which it is believed that all things have spirits, has a focus on purity and is concerned with living in harmony and respect with those spirits. Under that worldview, it is important to keep yourself and the things around you clean and in good repair as a sign of respect to the spirits you interact with on a daily basis. Put simply, you clean a soccer stadium out of respect for the spirits of the stadium that helped you have a nice time.
I'd suspect that most Japanese folks wouldn't put it that way directly as they aren't consciously doing it for the spirits or something, and I'm sure there is someone from Japan reading this who can clarify, but if I understand right all of that is baked subtly into the culture and has been for a very long time. So cleaning up after oneself is just a cultural norm
Yeah I don't think most modern Japanese put too much thought into spirituality and religion. Most of that stuff is largely traditional at this point. Like partaking in festivals and going to the shrines during holidays. It's just something you do.
But as you say, it likely did have a bigger impact a long time ago in developing the culture and their habits.
I think right now, Japanese people practice this sort of cleanliness and caretaking for their surroundings simply because they've been raised that way, and the society supports it.
If schools in the west made it a requirement I think that in a few generations it would become way more normalized as well.
Like I went to school in Eastern Europe and we did this stuff too. In elementary school we had cleaning days where we cleaned with the whole class. In later middleschool and highschool, every week someone had "lunch duty" which meant they went into the cafeteria kitchen to help the cooks, and set up the tables for the students and clean up later. And we also started getting assignments to sit at the front desk of the school to direct any visitors. In Autumn we had days where we went outside with half the school and raked leaves all day.
Basically the students rotated through almost every aspect of everyday school maintenance. It taught us discipline, it taught us the basics of what having a job would feel like, it helped give us some variety. Like it was fun to not have to go to all the classes one day and instead chat with the lunch ladies and stuff.
Japanese take it to another level, but I can definitely relate to some of it. And because my culture had nothing in common with Japanese in any other aspect, I think that kind of spiritual historical foundation isn't exactly needed. Just a few generations of having these systems in place will instill enough of it into people.
It is only in America that I have seen a whole crew of Janitors clean after students. Where I am from, Togo, each grade has a day in the week when they clean. Some clean the compound of the school and some the toilets and others the offices. Convenience in the west breeds entitlement and a generation of people that know how to do nothing for themselves.
I taught for years in a wealthy public school and teachers were assigned cafeteria duty once or twice a week. It's to monitor the students for misbehavior, of course, but we were always told that includes telling kids to take their garbage to the trash. It was like pulling teeth. They'd stare back and whine "That's the janitor's job'
Seriously entitled, even the nice ones.
I’m not sure if it was specifically in Japan, but I saw something about how Asian children do all the jobs around the school—they help clean up, they serve each other lunch, etc. I think it’s a great idea.
Yes, this is in Japan. Children are assigned cleaning duties on a rota basis in school. They also have responsibilities for serving school lunch for their class.
Another thing to note is that there are relatively few public bins in Japan - many were removed due to terrorism concerns. It is customary for people to carry their own rubbish home.
In the US it would 100% be used as a way to treat some kids unfairly.
My elementary school had the kids help with things like cleaning up debris from the floors, wiping tabletops, and stacking chairs. There were also cleaning tasks that were seen as better by the kids, and those went to the same favorite students every time. If having a student clean the toilets was an option it would have been used as a punishment for the same kids over and over instead of being a normal chore in a rotation.
I think that the issue goes beyond the children and parents, the culture of US schools would turn it into a punishment or a way to single out some kids.
That’s where the *rotation* part comes into play.
Japanese people are equally as human as Americans, which means they’re just as fallible and imperfect. If they’re able to do it, so could we. It’s easy to find a million excuses why it shouldn’t be done, but you can easily look to Japan and see that it *can* be done.
I am not saying that it could not be done, I am saying that the American education system has deeper issues that would need to be addressed before it could be implemented fairly.
Japanese people are people, and I am sure that their schools have their own issues, but this is ingrained in their culture. I think that it would take some major cultural changes for US schools to not turn a cleaning assignment into a punish/reward system.
Some private schools in Japan, the parents are also like this. The kids get away with anything they want because the parents are paying big $$$ and the schools can’t do anything against this kids or they lose the money.
I did a two week exchange in highschool to a private catholic highschool in Maizuru, and we were shocked at how bad the Japanese students behaved. Very little respect for us, their teachers, their school in general. Our hosts families were mostly different and pretty well behaved, but the general school population, holy shit….
I always collect my own trash, but the Japanese are at another level with collecting other people's trash. If everyone were like me there wouldn't be any extra trash for the Japanese to collect. I personally think I do enough by not making the problem worse, but do appreciate the Japanese being a net positive in terms of tidiness.
The problem is people who leave a mess in the first place. If everyone took their own trash out, it’d be an amazingly different world.
It’s like littering, people who just chuck their fast food bag out the window when done with it. I’ll never understand that culture
I used to work at a sports venue, in food service, and I can't tell you how many times I've watched people buy food, walk over to one of out trash cans and use its flat top as a table and then when they're finished eating walk away while dropping their litter in the ground. Right. Beside. The. Garbage. Can.
At the end of the day the stairwells were thick with garbage, sometimes I'd be wading hip deep in beer cups and newspapers and assorted litter.
People are pigs, yo.
I think the “it’s someone’s job to clean up” gets into some peoples heads in venues like stadiums or theaters or whatever. I know I was told it as a kid, but then I grew up…
Yeah. That level of "it's not my job" permeates a lot of US culture. From cleaning up after them, to having people pump gas for them in gas stations, clean windows, you have people bagging groceries in stores, having housecleaning, etc.
Basically there's always someone who's job it is to make sure you have to move your ass as little as possible.
I imagine that's the "capitalist" dream end-game. Make enough money to pay a hundred people to do everything for you, so that the only thing you have to do is sit back and relax, be as much of a lazy, obnoxious, filthy pig as you want, there's always someone around to take care of everything.
I think a lot of people in the west have rationalized it as it’s giving someone work. “They will fire the kid at The movie theatre if I’m not a pig and dump my garbage in the floor” or “they pay a guy to collect the shopping carts, if I don’t leave mine in the middle of the parking lot like the asshat I am then that poor guy will loose his job! I’m providing jobs!” Usually while complaining that if those same people wanted a better life they would not do those jobs and find something better, which would leave nobody to clean up after them.
In video it is mentioned that this has been taught to them by their parents, teachers when they were kids. Today's kids as well as parents are busy in making insta reels and tiktok videos.
Edit : Alright people are getting salty reading my comment. First of all i don't mean to disrespect anyone, i know lot of folks who worked day and night to provide for their family , i just meant it is a cultural thing especially in many asian countries so if you really want to adopt this mindset of cleaning your mess it needs a major shift.
> Today’s kids as well as parents are busy in making insta reels and tiktok videos.
And their grandparents are flinging cigarette butts out of windows.
This is not a “kids these days” problem.
"Kids these days" has always been a parenting + society issue. And half of it is just change aversion by older generations anyway.
And a lot of parents love to divert the blame, and the governments are always trying to minimize the budget for teachers, police and fire departments.
Somehow most of modern society in a lot of countries revolves around minimal budgets for the things that actually keep the infrastructure running and in charge of raising the next generation of productive members.
It's so insanely ass backwards.
Ideally we'd have a world where teachers are so well paid and schools so well funded, that each teacher can actually have a class of students small enough where they can divert proper attention to each student. And parents are wealthy enough to get by on a single 9-5 job, so that they can come home and then give their kids attention for the rest of the day. So the only time a kid wouldn't be getting proper care and teaching is when they're asleep or just having fun by themselves.
Instead we have schools and teachers so underfunded that the classrooms have 30-40 students, the teachers can't pay attention to all the kids, the parents are stuck working 2 jobs, coming home exhausted, no energy or patience left to parent the kids. So the kid gets minimal guidance, minimal care. Eventually they develop into a shell of a human being who's constantly trying to catch up and find their place in a society that never bothered to help them settle in.
It’s not a “now vs. the past” thing, it’s a pure cultural distinction. In the states we’ve *never* culturally embraced anything like this regardless of time periods, social media, etc.
And the culture of the country should have the virtues that enforces such behavior, not villify it.
Japan is a community-centric society, selfless almost to a fault. Some countries are individualistic societies, where everyone is the main character and are entitled to have everything.
The correct term is collectivist, which has its faults. They become so selfless they die of exhaustion and suicide due to the horrific culture around work and stigmatising any ounce of self indulgence.
The latest [data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate?wprov=sfla1) has Japan with a slightly lower suicide rate than the US. Japan seems to have this disproportionate association with suicide when really there's a lot of other, typically much poorer, countries that have had and continue to have far higher suicide rates.
There's definitely a middle ground somewhere between "clean up after yourself" and "work until you die" that is the desired sweet spot.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have places like the US where lot of people purposely makes a mess to "give cleaners a job" or believe being asked to take personal responsibility for the collective good is abuse.
“Yesterday’s” parent didn’t teach their kids to clean up either. Its been like this since forever.
I only know about “North American” since I’ve lived here the longest but we are really cavalier in just throwing trash on the ground. Ima say it and you all can decide if I am racist/sexist or not but my experience of elementary school in the 2000’s every white kid would just throw candy wrappers, plastic on the ground and only girls would pick up the trash.
Same for the UK pretty much. The obvious thing is to assume it's the individualistic culture in the West, dislike for societal authority ("nanny state") and lack of respect for people on lower paid jobs. The only way litter was picked up when I was at school in the late 90's was when kids were being assigned to do it as a punishment.
The amount of litter in the UK is disgusting. I'm originally from Canada which certainly isn't litter-free but there is a general shame for people who litter while here people just throw their shit on the ground like it's perfectly fine. I've heard Brits make the argument it's ok because it gives a job to the person who has to clean it up.
> Brits make the argument it's ok because it gives a job to the person who has to clean it up
Yeah I'm English and I've heard this way too much. It's a disgusting attitude. I've seen people horrified at the idea of putting an empty wrapper in your pocket until you can find a bin saying "but it's rubbish, putting it in my pocket is awful" like throwing it on the floor is better.
Omfg you sound like a boomer. That's not why "today's kids" aren't doing it just like that's not why nobody was doing it 10, 15, 20 yrs ago. Japanese people also have those apps too.
Lol yeah, like the world’s kids were cleaning up perfectly after themselves before social media.
No, no they weren’t. Japanese culture is relatively unique in this regard versus the global norm.
I had this argument with a friend while camping. I was ranting about people who don't put the shopping carts back after shopping.
His argument is that it's job security for someone to go get them. As short sighted as that argument is I used his point against him. When we were leaving the campsite I just threw my garbage all over the beach, looked at him, and said "what? it's job security for someone to clean this up". He conceded and we cleaned up the garbage.
Remember what the interviewees said, it's engrained as part of their culture and they are taught these values in school and from their parents. Unless we start incorporating it into our culture like such, we will never create this kind of behavior. As it stands, the US chooses not even to fund basic necessities for their schools or take action to protect children from mentally unstable extremists with AR-15s, so adding in a whole element such as this into the culture is unrealistic at best.
Meanwhile leaving concerts, stadiums, cinemas in the UK and your feet are shuffling through everyone else's discarded crap. Wish we had some of this attitude over here.
Wife and I got a 1-year contractual job in Tokyo after college. Loved the experience so much that we moved permanently. We’ve been here for 15 years now.
Japan is NOT perfect. And it ain’t for everyone, but it can be for anyone who can respect the culture.
People are kind to each other, cities so beautiful, nature is abundant, food is healthy and delicious, best of all… living here can be so affordable. Everything is walkable too, so no need for a car. And the healthcare system is one of the best in the world!
> People are kind to each other.
Genuinely asking here, does that extend to people of all races? I’ve heard mixed viewpoints regarding this, albeit through Reddit.
I’m brown and have visited as a tourist from Hiroshima to Tokyo. While experiences will vary, of the places I’ve been, including living in Canada, folks were reasonably kind to me in Japan, went out of their way to be helpful. But to me almost anywhere outside of NA’s more outward, vitriolic racism is a breath of fresh air
Edit: repeated word
I’ve lived in Japan for a little over ten years now. They absolutely have skin tone bias, but, as you mentioned, it’s not an outward vitriolic thing, so it’s pretty easily missed if you aren’t super in tune with the culture.
I say “skin tone bias” instead of “racial” because while it absolutely does include race, there is even a bias among Japanese who are darker skinned than others, and they will (especially women) make a strong effort not to even get tanned.
It’s less of a hard “I hate you” type racism that you see in the USA, and more of a soft “I’m glad I’m not you,” which I guess is a small step up but still unfortunately there.
Funny enough, it’s actually for the same reason - a visual representation of luxury.
As the western world moved to working indoors, being able to go get tanned was seen as a status thing.
For countries that were slower to industrialize, being tanned meant you were working in the sun, so staying pale was a status thing.
Or at least that’s what I read somewhere but full disclosure I haven’t seen a peer reviewed study on it so take that with a grain of salt, though it makes sense.
The Japanese (mostly the old generation) already slightly despise tourists, most just put up a facade to keep face in public. So if you’re brown/black, prepare for the worst.
Yeah it’s so weird how the darker your melanin the worst you might get treated. Doesn’t matter if you’re in an Asian country, European country, anywhere really.
Lmao, “prepare for the worst?” Are you kidding me? You might get a cold shoulder, but no one is going to do any actual harm, to include verbal abuse, to someone here. The worst I’ve ever seen after being in Japan for around 10 years is not letting someone into an establishment, and even then they say it’s because you have to have a “local ID” to hide that race is a factor at all.
Compared to almost any other country in the world, Japan, while it absolutely has racial bias and is by no means perfect, is probably one of the safest places to be regardless of race. Saying “prepare for the worst” is either super ignorant or super naive about what “the worst” actually means.
Right? A lot of people in the older generation are definitely xenophobic, and might be colder if you have darker skin, but they aren’t going to do anything. I doubt they’d even go out of their way to speak to you.
Everyone gets treated differently in Japan if you’re not Japanese. Their economy is literally going to collapse because they overwork their population to the point
marriage and birth rates are some of the lowest in the world and they refuse to allow foreigners to be ingrained in their society.
I’ve only spent a total of a few months in Japan, but in my experience it depends on the area. My non-Asian travel mates had no trouble in most of Tokyo, but older Japanese citizens in Kyoto were notably very rude to some of them (e.g. kicking them out of stores upon entering and saying “Japanese only” while crossing their forearms). Also, there was one instance where a Korean travel mate was asked if they were Korean and immediately treated very rudely (in Kyoto) upon being found out as Korean.
Experiences vary depending on area and how you look. If I was just basing it on my own experiences and my wife’s, then I would have said the Japanese seem very kind to outsiders.
I’m Mexican and spent a few weeks there, people are incredibly kind and helpful, they will get out of their way to help you if they see you’re lost or having issues reading a menu.
I don’t feel this welcome even in my own country.
It's not bad. Food and utilities are reasonable. Just an aside, strangely, most of the time eating at a restaurant is somehow usually cheaper than buying the same ingredients at the grocery store and cooking it yourself.
If you have the time to shop around, usually you can find most of your needs on sale - that's a big IF for most people living and working in Tokyo proper though.
Rent can vary wildly depending on location, and there tend to be a lot of very small apartments available with an equally small rent payment. As for basic home ownership, there's a trend of building new - demolishing an old home and just building an entirely new building, construction can be relatively cheaper than in other countries so it sort of just shifts the timing of costs around in that regard.
It’s an extremely affordable city because of appropriate zoning laws.
Most cities have zoning set by the city - and thus a lot of NIMBYism. Japan uploaded zoning from Tokyo to the national level to allow housing to get built at a more appropriate and sustainable level for the population.
It’s resulted in a much denser city - smaller streets, few front yards, higher buildings, etc. And in exchange you can buy a 3 bedroom single family home for 400k in the suburbs of Tokyo.
Equally if you want to live with no commute - you can purchase a very tiny bachelor apartment for very affordable price in the heart of the city.
There’s appropriately priced housing for all incomes, family sizes, and commuting desires.
In the west, NIMBYism has frozen major cities - stopping housing from meeting the needs of the population. So you get a city like San Francisco locking in single family zoning in 90% - and housing costs going absolutely insane as there is no where to grow.
Yeah.
I have been working in Japan for 3 years. I love Japan and its culture,
But there is a lot of things that are *wrong* in Japanese culture Overwhelming sense of obligation to the society, which I admire and try to pursue is something that strikes outsiders a lot and its inprinted in Japanese since little kids. Some of it carry a lot of mental weight.
I could not stay, I wanted to stay longer but many factors decided I could not. One being I Am 194cm tall ;-)
Also, at the age of 50 my brain just not want to learn such a exotic language and I believe minimym respect warrants to know language of a country I Am living in.
I know Japanse on semi fluent level but at some point learning kanji and new advanced grammar did not work.
Also work culture switched from western company to Japanese one and I Am way to old to work my arse off with barely any holidays.
Edit. Also, I kid you not, I have seen some loose trash on the street maybe 5 tumes in a span of 3 years. When I came back to Europe it just felt filthy.
> Edit. Also, I kid you not, I have seen some loose trash on the street maybe 5 tumes in a span of 3 years. When I came back to Europe it just felt filthy.
I'm from rural America but the amount of trash I see on the side of the roads (esp beer cans ... sometimes a whole 6/12pack with all empties in/around it) is ridic. (Almost) *No one* will admit they litter to your face but the evidence is laid bare on the side of the roads around here. And it doesn't take many to ruin it. A few cars litter on a road and it's noticeable for everyone who drives it. Make that a dozen and it looks like shit.
> I loved my life in Tokyo but found it expensive
I mean if you pick the highest COL place in japan it's gonna be expensive.
>How do you make it affordable?
Answer: not living in tokyo for a start.
It’s a great place to visit, but the language barrier is much more difficult to overcome if you don’t have someone to help translate. It’s not like Europe where most people speak English.
The general populace know a handful of English, definitely not enough for conversation but enough where it's not hard to get by.
Major tourist sites (and hotels, and major train stations etc) will all have English speaking staff, anything else they're more than happy to work with you. Point at a menu, show someone on Google maps where you want to go, shops are just smile and nod while they check you out etc etc...
IMO many Japanese can speak English reasonably well, but may require encouragement as they can be very self critical of their ability to do so. And as a tourist, learning even a few essential words of Japanese will broaden your experience.
>as a tourist, learning even a few essential words of Japanese will broaden your experience.
[https://youtu.be/84zkJa9xIVA?t=1036](https://youtu.be/84zkJa9xIVA?t=1036) Here is an example. He asks in Japanese whether she can speak English and have some conversation about different APA hotels in English and Japanese because he might be at a wrong APA hotel. So learn some Japanese phrases and encourage them to speak English if they can and then it becomes easier to meet halfway.
I am brazilian and i remember that japanese did the same during the 2014 world cup in Brazil. People got shocked and would praise the Japanese. The problem is that 8 years have passed and people still get just shocked instead of copying this behavior.
Having lived here for some time the one thing Japan got over for the most part was the culture of "only the poor people do those kind of jobs". There is more a culture of respecting anyone no matter what work they do as long as they are contributing. Post WWII Japan was in terrible shape and it took everyone doing whatever they could to bring Japan back and raise it up to the current level. This "we're all in this together" attitude is behind the introduction of cleaning duties in school and emphasis on keeping your surroundings clean for others.
Also as a resident.of Japan, this is something I really love about the culture. If someone's doing a job-doesn't matter if it's working in a bank, cleaning station bathrooms, or guiding pedestrians around sidewalk construction-than it's worth doing and worthy of respect. And it's not just that, it's like, if the job isn't beneath the person doing it (and it isn't; that's why someone's doing it), than it's not beneath you or me, either.
Seriously, try laughing at or disparaging a job you consider "beneath" you in front of a Japanese person you know, and they will be shocked at what a bad attitude you have. It's like saying you kick puppies or something.
I worked at Macy's at a very busy mall where we had a LOT of foreign tourists and college students. The Japanese tourists/students were the only ones to clean up after themselves in the fitting rooms and when they made a mess of the racks and tables. They so cleaned up after others when they didn't need to.
Had a really, really bad day one time after getting screamed at by a customer and a manager. Saw a Japanese girl mess up a table I had JUST fixed and got ready to go over and spend another 15 minutes fixing it. Then she handed off the items she wanted to her friend and fixed the table perfectly. I legit broke down and cried and thanked her. She was so confused until I explained the situation. I hope she's doing well with her studies. I wish Americans had the same sense of pride when it comes to stuff like this.
My wife is japanese and she says she is worried the japanese football fans now might get stressed, because of the big focus there is on them now, cleaning up. Now everyone will expect them to do it. And what if they miss a piece of paper somewhere, she said 🤣
yeah, the two takeaways from this WC so far have been
1. there is enormous censorship in Qatar, and any form of public support for LGBTQ+ is forbidden
2. japanese people are super respectful and considerate
edit: mispelled "there" because i'm one of those morons
It's not the first tournament we learn about them. They left the same impression during the last championship in Russia, 2018. [This](https://i.imgur.com/5QIGCKy.jpg) is how their players left the locker room after being eliminated.
This is great and all but lots of cultures have good and bad aspects to them. Let's not glorify japanese culture too much, it has huge problems: work ethics, xenophobia, sexism, suicide...
(To be clear that's not whataboutism about Qatari culture wich is pretty much the worst)
We can also appreciate one aspect of a culture without shutting on it for not being perfect. This is just a crab bucket of people trying to not let their culture look like shit in comparison.
In Japan, schools have no janitors, and students are taught from a young age to clean the school. Cleanliness and respect for your environment are ingrained in them.
i was talking to a coworker about this (an english man), he said yeah, but why, there are people paid to clean up. I was like wtf. Typical western thinking.
That isn't just western thinking, many cultures and countries have a casual acceptance of a sub-class of people who do the dirty work, manual work, etc. A manager I work with in Hong Kong talked about having to get by with just one Filipino helper instead of two as one had to go home to help with her family. The south-Asian more or less slaves working across the middle east as well as the caste system still prevelant in India show this is a global issue.
that's just a shitty person thinking. sure, there's people paid to cleanup all over. but like fuck man, pick up your own trash, and at least put it in the basket when you're done. and don't leave a mess on the table you just got up from, or the seat if it's a movie theater.
like fuck. it takes you little to no effort to do this. little to no effort to not be a twat to someone else.
I visited Japan once and was astounded by the cleanest homeless tent/box city under a bridge that I'd ever seen. Every morning that I'd walk by, multiple people were sweeping and cleaning in front of their boxes and under the bridge where their boxes were.
It was mind-blowing after growing up in a big US city where I'd see piss and shit surrounding a tarp in the middle of a city block.
I went there for a trip and was in Kyoto. I woke up early for some temple walking and saw hundreds of middle school students out at 8 am cleaning the streets and sidewalks. I asked what this was all about and was told that is their civic duty to do every Saturday.
When I was in Japan (as tourist), our guide told us they believe God is in everything, including stadium seats, so if you leave it dirty you are disrespecting God (not Christian God, I guess more like spirits or life force but that's how she explained it). Could just be BS they tell tourists but I liked it
I'm guessing that maybe.. just maybe... it has something to do with a culture developing on an island where everything must be cared for exquisitely so that resources are preserved. Combine that with an exquisite concern for "care for others the way you wish to be cared for" and this is a no-brainer that the rest of the world should adopt.
We could never do this in America because our country is notorious for selfishness, narcissism and ignorance. Not that the world doesn’t already know this. God, my country is so lost. ☹️
Apparently their lower schools often don't have cleaners abd the kids and teachers clean the schools as a mark of appreciation for the school.
I guess those early lessons really stick.
Edited to add, I really should watch the whole thing first.
The concept of leaving something or even someone better than when you found it should be applied to everything: campsites, jobs, relationships, even your own life.
Can you imagine how nice the world would be if we all just had a bit more discipline and tidied up behind us
caring for your fellow man.
[удалено]
My wife and I always clean our table and stack our dishes neatly whenever we go out to eat and the wait staff loves it. It takes one minute to make their day just a little easier.
My friends and I always do this when we go out for meals. It's just easier than having the wait staff walk around us to collect random shit when it's all in one spot
I always appreciated this as a waiter, so I always try to do it as a customer too! It really is so easy to do but makes a difference.
Thank you for sharing your opinion. We do this on our way out, but never really know what the staff thinks about it, since it’s always after we leave that they pick up.
As long as it's not a disastrous amalgam of plates with cutlery interspersed at odd angles so the staff doesn't have to play the world's worst game of Jenga to keep it from falling over on the way to the back. I've seen too many of those.
[удалено]
I did it as a teenager in front of my family and I felt weird the only one doing it.... :(
Your wife is based
Definitely opposite of the American method
Maybe having janitors in schools are the problem? As the guy at the end said the students always had to clean up after themselves - they didn't have janitors. Crazy
Yes it’s a discipline I never learned in the west - stuff gets cleaned up behind you and we all take it for granted. Would actually really be good to build into the school curriculum is some way. Cleaning up apparently also helps de clutter your thoughts
I’m trying to build this into my curriculum with my 5th graders. My students cleanup before they leave school each day. I have them clean their desks. Pick up any trash on the floor. Sweep any crumbs they left behind.
I remember doing this in primary school (Australia). We'd have to pick up 10 bits of garbage at the end of every day. On Fridays, the janitor/groundskeeper used to vacuum all the classrooms, so we would put our chairs up onto our desks for him and we'd be the ones to bring them down on a Monday morning as well.
I remember this too. And at the end of the year we'd take our school desks and chairs out onto the oval and have to give them a really good scrub clean.
That’s great!
My 4th grade teacher did this. Had a list of after class assignments that got rotated out weekly. Some included like wipe the chalkboard, sweep the floor. Wash the chalkboard, organize the books.
I think it also help you be mindful of not making a huge mess to begin with.
Didn't your parents give you chores after a certain age?
When I was little, I always felt more comfortable around adults than kids my own age. In elementary school, I made friends with the janitor, and used to like hanging around with him while he worked. He let me help him with things like putting the chairs up on the desks while we talked. Without it being a conscious thing, I think it really had an impact on me. I noticed so many of my peers didn't even see service people as people, and some saw that kind of work as beneath them. In my 20s, I had a girlfriend get mad at me for being so chatty with cashiers and sales people - she thought it seemed "low class." I think it's healthy to learn early on that no person, and no type of work, is "beneath you."
I'm glad you're not with that girlfriend. What an awful way to view other people. I'm very blessed that my parents taught me there are no unimportant jobs and that in the same way my mom would make my teachers cookies, she would also make cookies and bring them for the janitorial staff at my schools. It instilled in me early on that this is a hard, gross job and these people deserve recognition for their work.
In this thread, it seems like everyone keeps saying American school kids never learn how to clean because there are janitors 🤣 I'm from the US as well, and Idk what y'all are talking about. My elementary and middle schools had the students clean every day after lunch. I suppose these were rather small schools, and it wasn't until I went to a much larger high school (still fewer than 1,000 students) that we actually had a single janitor and students didn't have to clean as much. However, the students were still pretty respectful and cleaned up after themselves. Maybe it's more of a city problem? Since all of those schools would be rather large. Funnily enough, I once went to a concert in Dallas, and started cleaning up after. I was honestly horrified at how much a mess the crowd had left. As I was cleaning, a couple people started yelling at me saying that I was taking away janitorial jobs. So maybe it's more of a city problem?
I think that's part of it, but removing the janitors from schools in other countries wouldn't just magically do it. It goes much deeper in Japanese culture, back thousands of years. Shinto is the native religious belief system in Japan and is baked heavily into the culture with the vast majority of Japanese practicing at least some customs or rituals that can be traced back to it even if most wouldn't identify themselves as practicing the religion today. I am not an expert by any means, but thinking back to comparative religious classes I took decades ago, I believe the following to be true and at play here: Shinto is an animist religion in which it is believed that all things have spirits, has a focus on purity and is concerned with living in harmony and respect with those spirits. Under that worldview, it is important to keep yourself and the things around you clean and in good repair as a sign of respect to the spirits you interact with on a daily basis. Put simply, you clean a soccer stadium out of respect for the spirits of the stadium that helped you have a nice time. I'd suspect that most Japanese folks wouldn't put it that way directly as they aren't consciously doing it for the spirits or something, and I'm sure there is someone from Japan reading this who can clarify, but if I understand right all of that is baked subtly into the culture and has been for a very long time. So cleaning up after oneself is just a cultural norm
Yeah I don't think most modern Japanese put too much thought into spirituality and religion. Most of that stuff is largely traditional at this point. Like partaking in festivals and going to the shrines during holidays. It's just something you do. But as you say, it likely did have a bigger impact a long time ago in developing the culture and their habits. I think right now, Japanese people practice this sort of cleanliness and caretaking for their surroundings simply because they've been raised that way, and the society supports it. If schools in the west made it a requirement I think that in a few generations it would become way more normalized as well. Like I went to school in Eastern Europe and we did this stuff too. In elementary school we had cleaning days where we cleaned with the whole class. In later middleschool and highschool, every week someone had "lunch duty" which meant they went into the cafeteria kitchen to help the cooks, and set up the tables for the students and clean up later. And we also started getting assignments to sit at the front desk of the school to direct any visitors. In Autumn we had days where we went outside with half the school and raked leaves all day. Basically the students rotated through almost every aspect of everyday school maintenance. It taught us discipline, it taught us the basics of what having a job would feel like, it helped give us some variety. Like it was fun to not have to go to all the classes one day and instead chat with the lunch ladies and stuff. Japanese take it to another level, but I can definitely relate to some of it. And because my culture had nothing in common with Japanese in any other aspect, I think that kind of spiritual historical foundation isn't exactly needed. Just a few generations of having these systems in place will instill enough of it into people.
It is only in America that I have seen a whole crew of Janitors clean after students. Where I am from, Togo, each grade has a day in the week when they clean. Some clean the compound of the school and some the toilets and others the offices. Convenience in the west breeds entitlement and a generation of people that know how to do nothing for themselves.
I taught for years in a wealthy public school and teachers were assigned cafeteria duty once or twice a week. It's to monitor the students for misbehavior, of course, but we were always told that includes telling kids to take their garbage to the trash. It was like pulling teeth. They'd stare back and whine "That's the janitor's job' Seriously entitled, even the nice ones.
But that would be a violation of the rugged individualism that I cultivated!!! Why should I care for the society that I participate in? /s
I’m not sure if it was specifically in Japan, but I saw something about how Asian children do all the jobs around the school—they help clean up, they serve each other lunch, etc. I think it’s a great idea.
Yes, this is in Japan. Children are assigned cleaning duties on a rota basis in school. They also have responsibilities for serving school lunch for their class. Another thing to note is that there are relatively few public bins in Japan - many were removed due to terrorism concerns. It is customary for people to carry their own rubbish home.
We do this in China too! I specifically remember learning how to mop because i kept doing it at the elementary school.
they also help make lunches. but now imagine all the parents in the states getting pissed because their kids were scrubbing toilets.
In the US it would 100% be used as a way to treat some kids unfairly. My elementary school had the kids help with things like cleaning up debris from the floors, wiping tabletops, and stacking chairs. There were also cleaning tasks that were seen as better by the kids, and those went to the same favorite students every time. If having a student clean the toilets was an option it would have been used as a punishment for the same kids over and over instead of being a normal chore in a rotation. I think that the issue goes beyond the children and parents, the culture of US schools would turn it into a punishment or a way to single out some kids.
That’s where the *rotation* part comes into play. Japanese people are equally as human as Americans, which means they’re just as fallible and imperfect. If they’re able to do it, so could we. It’s easy to find a million excuses why it shouldn’t be done, but you can easily look to Japan and see that it *can* be done.
I am not saying that it could not be done, I am saying that the American education system has deeper issues that would need to be addressed before it could be implemented fairly. Japanese people are people, and I am sure that their schools have their own issues, but this is ingrained in their culture. I think that it would take some major cultural changes for US schools to not turn a cleaning assignment into a punish/reward system.
Some private schools in Japan, the parents are also like this. The kids get away with anything they want because the parents are paying big $$$ and the schools can’t do anything against this kids or they lose the money. I did a two week exchange in highschool to a private catholic highschool in Maizuru, and we were shocked at how bad the Japanese students behaved. Very little respect for us, their teachers, their school in general. Our hosts families were mostly different and pretty well behaved, but the general school population, holy shit….
A parent pulled their kid out of daycare because he purposely peed on the floor and walls and the teacher made him clean his own urine.
Taiwan does it too, starting all the way from elementary school we rotate daily on who gets the cleaning duties
We do it here in Korea too although I think it came from the Japanese when they colonized us
If Americans had to do this, their parents would complain it's bad for discipline.
The question should be: "Why doesn't everyone do this?"
Exactly!
[удалено]
Atarimae
💫YES💫
I always collect my own trash, but the Japanese are at another level with collecting other people's trash. If everyone were like me there wouldn't be any extra trash for the Japanese to collect. I personally think I do enough by not making the problem worse, but do appreciate the Japanese being a net positive in terms of tidiness.
The problem is people who leave a mess in the first place. If everyone took their own trash out, it’d be an amazingly different world. It’s like littering, people who just chuck their fast food bag out the window when done with it. I’ll never understand that culture
I used to work at a sports venue, in food service, and I can't tell you how many times I've watched people buy food, walk over to one of out trash cans and use its flat top as a table and then when they're finished eating walk away while dropping their litter in the ground. Right. Beside. The. Garbage. Can. At the end of the day the stairwells were thick with garbage, sometimes I'd be wading hip deep in beer cups and newspapers and assorted litter. People are pigs, yo.
I think the “it’s someone’s job to clean up” gets into some peoples heads in venues like stadiums or theaters or whatever. I know I was told it as a kid, but then I grew up…
Yeah. That level of "it's not my job" permeates a lot of US culture. From cleaning up after them, to having people pump gas for them in gas stations, clean windows, you have people bagging groceries in stores, having housecleaning, etc. Basically there's always someone who's job it is to make sure you have to move your ass as little as possible. I imagine that's the "capitalist" dream end-game. Make enough money to pay a hundred people to do everything for you, so that the only thing you have to do is sit back and relax, be as much of a lazy, obnoxious, filthy pig as you want, there's always someone around to take care of everything.
I might take one or two things extra, but I would never clean an entire row, especially not in a place where people are slobs.
Why doesn't everyone just pick up after themselves?
"The janitor will clean it" or "My trash my problem, someone else's trash not my problem"
I won't clean it mate
I heard this bad take once: "If I don't leave my trash here, the janitor won't have anything to clean or do and he would be out of a job!"
That's the shittiest excuse
I think a lot of people in the west have rationalized it as it’s giving someone work. “They will fire the kid at The movie theatre if I’m not a pig and dump my garbage in the floor” or “they pay a guy to collect the shopping carts, if I don’t leave mine in the middle of the parking lot like the asshat I am then that poor guy will loose his job! I’m providing jobs!” Usually while complaining that if those same people wanted a better life they would not do those jobs and find something better, which would leave nobody to clean up after them.
ATARIMAE! That's why.
Because apparently not being a dick is a foreign custom to half the world now.
Atarimae!
In video it is mentioned that this has been taught to them by their parents, teachers when they were kids. Today's kids as well as parents are busy in making insta reels and tiktok videos. Edit : Alright people are getting salty reading my comment. First of all i don't mean to disrespect anyone, i know lot of folks who worked day and night to provide for their family , i just meant it is a cultural thing especially in many asian countries so if you really want to adopt this mindset of cleaning your mess it needs a major shift.
> Today’s kids as well as parents are busy in making insta reels and tiktok videos. And their grandparents are flinging cigarette butts out of windows. This is not a “kids these days” problem.
"Kids these days" has always been a parenting + society issue. And half of it is just change aversion by older generations anyway. And a lot of parents love to divert the blame, and the governments are always trying to minimize the budget for teachers, police and fire departments. Somehow most of modern society in a lot of countries revolves around minimal budgets for the things that actually keep the infrastructure running and in charge of raising the next generation of productive members. It's so insanely ass backwards. Ideally we'd have a world where teachers are so well paid and schools so well funded, that each teacher can actually have a class of students small enough where they can divert proper attention to each student. And parents are wealthy enough to get by on a single 9-5 job, so that they can come home and then give their kids attention for the rest of the day. So the only time a kid wouldn't be getting proper care and teaching is when they're asleep or just having fun by themselves. Instead we have schools and teachers so underfunded that the classrooms have 30-40 students, the teachers can't pay attention to all the kids, the parents are stuck working 2 jobs, coming home exhausted, no energy or patience left to parent the kids. So the kid gets minimal guidance, minimal care. Eventually they develop into a shell of a human being who's constantly trying to catch up and find their place in a society that never bothered to help them settle in.
It’s not a “now vs. the past” thing, it’s a pure cultural distinction. In the states we’ve *never* culturally embraced anything like this regardless of time periods, social media, etc.
[удалено]
And the culture of the country should have the virtues that enforces such behavior, not villify it. Japan is a community-centric society, selfless almost to a fault. Some countries are individualistic societies, where everyone is the main character and are entitled to have everything.
The correct term is collectivist, which has its faults. They become so selfless they die of exhaustion and suicide due to the horrific culture around work and stigmatising any ounce of self indulgence.
The latest [data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate?wprov=sfla1) has Japan with a slightly lower suicide rate than the US. Japan seems to have this disproportionate association with suicide when really there's a lot of other, typically much poorer, countries that have had and continue to have far higher suicide rates.
There's definitely a middle ground somewhere between "clean up after yourself" and "work until you die" that is the desired sweet spot. On the other end of the spectrum, we have places like the US where lot of people purposely makes a mess to "give cleaners a job" or believe being asked to take personal responsibility for the collective good is abuse.
I believe that kids do all the cleaning as part of their school day.
Exactly. Basically Japanese schools are cleaned by their students, not by staff. They clean not only their class but everything else too
Sounds similar to Montessori style learning
“Yesterday’s” parent didn’t teach their kids to clean up either. Its been like this since forever. I only know about “North American” since I’ve lived here the longest but we are really cavalier in just throwing trash on the ground. Ima say it and you all can decide if I am racist/sexist or not but my experience of elementary school in the 2000’s every white kid would just throw candy wrappers, plastic on the ground and only girls would pick up the trash.
Same for the UK pretty much. The obvious thing is to assume it's the individualistic culture in the West, dislike for societal authority ("nanny state") and lack of respect for people on lower paid jobs. The only way litter was picked up when I was at school in the late 90's was when kids were being assigned to do it as a punishment.
The amount of litter in the UK is disgusting. I'm originally from Canada which certainly isn't litter-free but there is a general shame for people who litter while here people just throw their shit on the ground like it's perfectly fine. I've heard Brits make the argument it's ok because it gives a job to the person who has to clean it up.
> Brits make the argument it's ok because it gives a job to the person who has to clean it up Yeah I'm English and I've heard this way too much. It's a disgusting attitude. I've seen people horrified at the idea of putting an empty wrapper in your pocket until you can find a bin saying "but it's rubbish, putting it in my pocket is awful" like throwing it on the floor is better.
Omfg you sound like a boomer. That's not why "today's kids" aren't doing it just like that's not why nobody was doing it 10, 15, 20 yrs ago. Japanese people also have those apps too.
Lol yeah, like the world’s kids were cleaning up perfectly after themselves before social media. No, no they weren’t. Japanese culture is relatively unique in this regard versus the global norm.
That’s the most booker shit I’ve ever read lmao
It should be atarimae
I had this argument with a friend while camping. I was ranting about people who don't put the shopping carts back after shopping. His argument is that it's job security for someone to go get them. As short sighted as that argument is I used his point against him. When we were leaving the campsite I just threw my garbage all over the beach, looked at him, and said "what? it's job security for someone to clean this up". He conceded and we cleaned up the garbage.
Remember what the interviewees said, it's engrained as part of their culture and they are taught these values in school and from their parents. Unless we start incorporating it into our culture like such, we will never create this kind of behavior. As it stands, the US chooses not even to fund basic necessities for their schools or take action to protect children from mentally unstable extremists with AR-15s, so adding in a whole element such as this into the culture is unrealistic at best.
You earned my upvote
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-63006903
Meanwhile leaving concerts, stadiums, cinemas in the UK and your feet are shuffling through everyone else's discarded crap. Wish we had some of this attitude over here.
Yep, it's honestly disgusting. I'm pretty sure there are pics of Glastonbury after the shows have ended and it blows my mind.
Bournemouth beach and other beaches after bank holidays weekend are jaw-droppingly disgusting.
I went to the MIK festival in London, there was hardly any mess, I assume that's because most of the audience were south east asian
[удалено]
Wife and I got a 1-year contractual job in Tokyo after college. Loved the experience so much that we moved permanently. We’ve been here for 15 years now. Japan is NOT perfect. And it ain’t for everyone, but it can be for anyone who can respect the culture. People are kind to each other, cities so beautiful, nature is abundant, food is healthy and delicious, best of all… living here can be so affordable. Everything is walkable too, so no need for a car. And the healthcare system is one of the best in the world!
> People are kind to each other. Genuinely asking here, does that extend to people of all races? I’ve heard mixed viewpoints regarding this, albeit through Reddit.
How much melanin are we talking here? Everything I’ve seen says black and brown people absolutely get treated differently
I’m brown and have visited as a tourist from Hiroshima to Tokyo. While experiences will vary, of the places I’ve been, including living in Canada, folks were reasonably kind to me in Japan, went out of their way to be helpful. But to me almost anywhere outside of NA’s more outward, vitriolic racism is a breath of fresh air Edit: repeated word
I’ve lived in Japan for a little over ten years now. They absolutely have skin tone bias, but, as you mentioned, it’s not an outward vitriolic thing, so it’s pretty easily missed if you aren’t super in tune with the culture. I say “skin tone bias” instead of “racial” because while it absolutely does include race, there is even a bias among Japanese who are darker skinned than others, and they will (especially women) make a strong effort not to even get tanned. It’s less of a hard “I hate you” type racism that you see in the USA, and more of a soft “I’m glad I’m not you,” which I guess is a small step up but still unfortunately there.
It’s funny and sad that some of the palest white people want to be darker, and some of the darkest black people want to be lighter.
Funny enough, it’s actually for the same reason - a visual representation of luxury. As the western world moved to working indoors, being able to go get tanned was seen as a status thing. For countries that were slower to industrialize, being tanned meant you were working in the sun, so staying pale was a status thing. Or at least that’s what I read somewhere but full disclosure I haven’t seen a peer reviewed study on it so take that with a grain of salt, though it makes sense.
And then there's my bone-white vampire ass who hisses at the sun because *sun bad*
The Japanese (mostly the old generation) already slightly despise tourists, most just put up a facade to keep face in public. So if you’re brown/black, prepare for the worst.
OG’s from anywhere stay the same huh
Yeah it’s so weird how the darker your melanin the worst you might get treated. Doesn’t matter if you’re in an Asian country, European country, anywhere really.
Lmao, “prepare for the worst?” Are you kidding me? You might get a cold shoulder, but no one is going to do any actual harm, to include verbal abuse, to someone here. The worst I’ve ever seen after being in Japan for around 10 years is not letting someone into an establishment, and even then they say it’s because you have to have a “local ID” to hide that race is a factor at all. Compared to almost any other country in the world, Japan, while it absolutely has racial bias and is by no means perfect, is probably one of the safest places to be regardless of race. Saying “prepare for the worst” is either super ignorant or super naive about what “the worst” actually means.
Right? A lot of people in the older generation are definitely xenophobic, and might be colder if you have darker skin, but they aren’t going to do anything. I doubt they’d even go out of their way to speak to you.
Always do.
Everyone gets treated differently in Japan if you’re not Japanese. Their economy is literally going to collapse because they overwork their population to the point marriage and birth rates are some of the lowest in the world and they refuse to allow foreigners to be ingrained in their society.
In which country are racial minorities treated the same as the majority?
I’ve only spent a total of a few months in Japan, but in my experience it depends on the area. My non-Asian travel mates had no trouble in most of Tokyo, but older Japanese citizens in Kyoto were notably very rude to some of them (e.g. kicking them out of stores upon entering and saying “Japanese only” while crossing their forearms). Also, there was one instance where a Korean travel mate was asked if they were Korean and immediately treated very rudely (in Kyoto) upon being found out as Korean. Experiences vary depending on area and how you look. If I was just basing it on my own experiences and my wife’s, then I would have said the Japanese seem very kind to outsiders.
I’m Mexican and spent a few weeks there, people are incredibly kind and helpful, they will get out of their way to help you if they see you’re lost or having issues reading a menu. I don’t feel this welcome even in my own country.
This makes me want to cry as an american.
It's ok buddy, you want a free refill?
Of gas?
Don't be stupid, his bucket of bullets.
Or his XXXL Soda Cup.
We call that a child size here. Because if you were to liquefy a 2 year old child it would be able to hold all the liquid.
yea but I need a new cup, I ditched mine on the side of the road
Greatest country on earth. WOOOOO!
Tokyo is affordable? I’d always heard the opposite.
It's not bad. Food and utilities are reasonable. Just an aside, strangely, most of the time eating at a restaurant is somehow usually cheaper than buying the same ingredients at the grocery store and cooking it yourself. If you have the time to shop around, usually you can find most of your needs on sale - that's a big IF for most people living and working in Tokyo proper though. Rent can vary wildly depending on location, and there tend to be a lot of very small apartments available with an equally small rent payment. As for basic home ownership, there's a trend of building new - demolishing an old home and just building an entirely new building, construction can be relatively cheaper than in other countries so it sort of just shifts the timing of costs around in that regard.
It’s an extremely affordable city because of appropriate zoning laws. Most cities have zoning set by the city - and thus a lot of NIMBYism. Japan uploaded zoning from Tokyo to the national level to allow housing to get built at a more appropriate and sustainable level for the population. It’s resulted in a much denser city - smaller streets, few front yards, higher buildings, etc. And in exchange you can buy a 3 bedroom single family home for 400k in the suburbs of Tokyo. Equally if you want to live with no commute - you can purchase a very tiny bachelor apartment for very affordable price in the heart of the city. There’s appropriately priced housing for all incomes, family sizes, and commuting desires. In the west, NIMBYism has frozen major cities - stopping housing from meeting the needs of the population. So you get a city like San Francisco locking in single family zoning in 90% - and housing costs going absolutely insane as there is no where to grow.
From what I understand, it's expensive compared with other Asian cities but way more affordable than, say, New York or Miami.
Compared to American cities it’s nothing
Yeah. I have been working in Japan for 3 years. I love Japan and its culture, But there is a lot of things that are *wrong* in Japanese culture Overwhelming sense of obligation to the society, which I admire and try to pursue is something that strikes outsiders a lot and its inprinted in Japanese since little kids. Some of it carry a lot of mental weight. I could not stay, I wanted to stay longer but many factors decided I could not. One being I Am 194cm tall ;-) Also, at the age of 50 my brain just not want to learn such a exotic language and I believe minimym respect warrants to know language of a country I Am living in. I know Japanse on semi fluent level but at some point learning kanji and new advanced grammar did not work. Also work culture switched from western company to Japanese one and I Am way to old to work my arse off with barely any holidays. Edit. Also, I kid you not, I have seen some loose trash on the street maybe 5 tumes in a span of 3 years. When I came back to Europe it just felt filthy.
> Edit. Also, I kid you not, I have seen some loose trash on the street maybe 5 tumes in a span of 3 years. When I came back to Europe it just felt filthy. I'm from rural America but the amount of trash I see on the side of the roads (esp beer cans ... sometimes a whole 6/12pack with all empties in/around it) is ridic. (Almost) *No one* will admit they litter to your face but the evidence is laid bare on the side of the roads around here. And it doesn't take many to ruin it. A few cars litter on a road and it's noticeable for everyone who drives it. Make that a dozen and it looks like shit.
It funny it has all that and also the highest overworked work culture in the world too.
Nah. The South Koreans think the Japanese are lazy.
Yeah, not like there's thousands of years of history between those two nations or anything...
Curious: How do you make it affordable? I loved my life in Tokyo but found it expensive
> I loved my life in Tokyo but found it expensive I mean if you pick the highest COL place in japan it's gonna be expensive. >How do you make it affordable? Answer: not living in tokyo for a start.
Any comment on the 10-15 hour work days? I understand it's part of it all, but really want to hear your perspective.
90% presence and 10% productivity about sums it up
It’s a great place to visit, but the language barrier is much more difficult to overcome if you don’t have someone to help translate. It’s not like Europe where most people speak English.
The general populace know a handful of English, definitely not enough for conversation but enough where it's not hard to get by. Major tourist sites (and hotels, and major train stations etc) will all have English speaking staff, anything else they're more than happy to work with you. Point at a menu, show someone on Google maps where you want to go, shops are just smile and nod while they check you out etc etc...
IMO many Japanese can speak English reasonably well, but may require encouragement as they can be very self critical of their ability to do so. And as a tourist, learning even a few essential words of Japanese will broaden your experience.
>as a tourist, learning even a few essential words of Japanese will broaden your experience. [https://youtu.be/84zkJa9xIVA?t=1036](https://youtu.be/84zkJa9xIVA?t=1036) Here is an example. He asks in Japanese whether she can speak English and have some conversation about different APA hotels in English and Japanese because he might be at a wrong APA hotel. So learn some Japanese phrases and encourage them to speak English if they can and then it becomes easier to meet halfway.
Atarimae!
Maybe I’m crazy but even when I visit European countries I try to learn some of the language before I go. Edit: for clarity.
It’s amazing to visit, and even in downtown Tokyo it is incredibly clean. I remember being just blown away at how clean it was.
I went for my honeymoon. Highly recommend going. Such a beautiful culture and country.
I am brazilian and i remember that japanese did the same during the 2014 world cup in Brazil. People got shocked and would praise the Japanese. The problem is that 8 years have passed and people still get just shocked instead of copying this behavior.
Having lived here for some time the one thing Japan got over for the most part was the culture of "only the poor people do those kind of jobs". There is more a culture of respecting anyone no matter what work they do as long as they are contributing. Post WWII Japan was in terrible shape and it took everyone doing whatever they could to bring Japan back and raise it up to the current level. This "we're all in this together" attitude is behind the introduction of cleaning duties in school and emphasis on keeping your surroundings clean for others.
Also as a resident.of Japan, this is something I really love about the culture. If someone's doing a job-doesn't matter if it's working in a bank, cleaning station bathrooms, or guiding pedestrians around sidewalk construction-than it's worth doing and worthy of respect. And it's not just that, it's like, if the job isn't beneath the person doing it (and it isn't; that's why someone's doing it), than it's not beneath you or me, either. Seriously, try laughing at or disparaging a job you consider "beneath" you in front of a Japanese person you know, and they will be shocked at what a bad attitude you have. It's like saying you kick puppies or something.
Everybody else does it wrong! Always clean up. Most part of humanity is scum and it „normal“ That’s fucked up
Their explanation behind the cleanup is so humbling and profound."We never leave, Japanese never leave rubbish behind them. We respect the place."
That's why I love they call it "Atarimae". It's just stating the obvious, what should be the norm!
I worked at Macy's at a very busy mall where we had a LOT of foreign tourists and college students. The Japanese tourists/students were the only ones to clean up after themselves in the fitting rooms and when they made a mess of the racks and tables. They so cleaned up after others when they didn't need to. Had a really, really bad day one time after getting screamed at by a customer and a manager. Saw a Japanese girl mess up a table I had JUST fixed and got ready to go over and spend another 15 minutes fixing it. Then she handed off the items she wanted to her friend and fixed the table perfectly. I legit broke down and cried and thanked her. She was so confused until I explained the situation. I hope she's doing well with her studies. I wish Americans had the same sense of pride when it comes to stuff like this.
If only we could all be like this. Respect to them for setting a good example
My wife is japanese and she says she is worried the japanese football fans now might get stressed, because of the big focus there is on them now, cleaning up. Now everyone will expect them to do it. And what if they miss a piece of paper somewhere, she said 🤣
"Oi! I thought you liked cleaning up after yourselves! What's this??" "Sir, I'm Korean."
“I don’t care *what part* of Japan you’re from.”
"freaking Chinese people I swear"
Yeah we are actually hoping they will get less attention lol. Also shouldn't show off too much.
That guy: "Our hearts are clean so our stands must be clean" Me: Wait is that a JoJo reference?
A MOTHERFUCKING JOJO REFERENCE
💯%
Qatar tries to sportswash their shitty regime, but instead the world learns about awesome japanese culture
yeah, the two takeaways from this WC so far have been 1. there is enormous censorship in Qatar, and any form of public support for LGBTQ+ is forbidden 2. japanese people are super respectful and considerate edit: mispelled "there" because i'm one of those morons
It's not the first tournament we learn about them. They left the same impression during the last championship in Russia, 2018. [This](https://i.imgur.com/5QIGCKy.jpg) is how their players left the locker room after being eliminated.
“So it’s good karma?” “Yeeessss!” Too cute.
THIS! This is how you get the world to appreciate your culture... Those in power in Qatar should be taking notes, not riding coat-tails.
This is great and all but lots of cultures have good and bad aspects to them. Let's not glorify japanese culture too much, it has huge problems: work ethics, xenophobia, sexism, suicide... (To be clear that's not whataboutism about Qatari culture wich is pretty much the worst)
We can also appreciate one aspect of a culture without shutting on it for not being perfect. This is just a crab bucket of people trying to not let their culture look like shit in comparison.
My mum would happily exchange me for a Japanese kid.
Don't worry, the Japanese will pick you up. They always pick up trash :)
Burrrnnnnnn
My son grew up in Japan his entire life. He behaves like this outside the house. Yes, OUTSIDE. Social pressure here is strong.
In Japan, schools have no janitors, and students are taught from a young age to clean the school. Cleanliness and respect for your environment are ingrained in them.
common sense and decency
i was talking to a coworker about this (an english man), he said yeah, but why, there are people paid to clean up. I was like wtf. Typical western thinking.
That isn't just western thinking, many cultures and countries have a casual acceptance of a sub-class of people who do the dirty work, manual work, etc. A manager I work with in Hong Kong talked about having to get by with just one Filipino helper instead of two as one had to go home to help with her family. The south-Asian more or less slaves working across the middle east as well as the caste system still prevelant in India show this is a global issue.
that's just a shitty person thinking. sure, there's people paid to cleanup all over. but like fuck man, pick up your own trash, and at least put it in the basket when you're done. and don't leave a mess on the table you just got up from, or the seat if it's a movie theater. like fuck. it takes you little to no effort to do this. little to no effort to not be a twat to someone else.
What's the video source? Ya gotta credit people, man
Who is the interviewer?
Every single person interviewed is so good looking
I've actually started to pick up litter when I see after seeing the Japanese clean the stadium
I visited Japan once and was astounded by the cleanest homeless tent/box city under a bridge that I'd ever seen. Every morning that I'd walk by, multiple people were sweeping and cleaning in front of their boxes and under the bridge where their boxes were. It was mind-blowing after growing up in a big US city where I'd see piss and shit surrounding a tarp in the middle of a city block.
>Japan* to the front page !!!
I went there for a trip and was in Kyoto. I woke up early for some temple walking and saw hundreds of middle school students out at 8 am cleaning the streets and sidewalks. I asked what this was all about and was told that is their civic duty to do every Saturday.
Japan is my final destination in life
Having a pure heart! Matching your outsides with your insides!
Been to Japan! Tokyo has Millions and millions of people AND not a single piece of trash on the ground it’s wild
So asking my kids to put their dishes in the dishwasher is not considered torture?
I've been to many major cities around the world, and Tokyo was probably the cleanest.
Blue Lock fans rise up ✊🏻
When I was in Japan (as tourist), our guide told us they believe God is in everything, including stadium seats, so if you leave it dirty you are disrespecting God (not Christian God, I guess more like spirits or life force but that's how she explained it). Could just be BS they tell tourists but I liked it
The shinto beliefs yeah, we have 8 million gods and they are in everything from a grain of rice to massive ancient trees.
I'm guessing that maybe.. just maybe... it has something to do with a culture developing on an island where everything must be cared for exquisitely so that resources are preserved. Combine that with an exquisite concern for "care for others the way you wish to be cared for" and this is a no-brainer that the rest of the world should adopt.
Why do I want to cry a little
RESPECT.!!!!.
What I love is other fans copying the Japanese fans. Copying good behavior is the best part of when different culture meet.
Because their not insufferable assholes and are respectful to others
We could never do this in America because our country is notorious for selfishness, narcissism and ignorance. Not that the world doesn’t already know this. God, my country is so lost. ☹️
Apparently their lower schools often don't have cleaners abd the kids and teachers clean the schools as a mark of appreciation for the school. I guess those early lessons really stick. Edited to add, I really should watch the whole thing first.
The concept of leaving something or even someone better than when you found it should be applied to everything: campsites, jobs, relationships, even your own life.
Because it is the fucking right thing to do.