Japan fun Stuff!

Cultural differences:

Sorry I did these posts backwards, but that's okay. I'm trying not to bore you guys too much, so I am trying to give you the abridged version. We went for ten days and it was so much fun!!! Where we stayed the first night. They provide the slippers for you to wear inside the room as well as different slippers for the bathroom. No furniture!

Just enough room for us to sleep and store our luggage.

Of course the shared bathroom...

And the lovely sqatter toilets! Ryan didn't have to suffer with these at all because he literally can't squat because of his knee. Luckily there were a few western style bathrooms for him every now and then.

Public transportation is used way more than cars. We took several ferries, trains and buses.

There are tons of signs everywhere.

The doorways are not meant for people over 6 feet tall! :)

One place we stayed actually had furniture, but this is not very common. We went to a thrift store and found all sorts of amazing furniture for way cheap. There just isn't a demand for it in Japan. They had a 5 piece modern-style sectional couch for 50 bucks. Crazy!

No one really eats cereal for breakfast, usually they eat miso soup and other heavy foods.

Inside one of the houses we stayed in...

No couches, but they do have TV, fax, and computers.

Tiny cars driving on the left side of the road.

This is Stef and Jesse's western style toilet room. (Sorry it is dark)

Note the top of the toilet has a hand faucet that runs when you flush.

They have to separate garbages EVERYWHERE! There are four different ways to separate your garbage at home and everywhere in public you have to separate burnables from plastics.

Tons of shops are all packed together and are usually super small. There's 120 million people in an area the size of California, so they are always busy!

There are spiders everywhere, but this particular one was on the island of Uoshima, so they have the opportunity to grow really big. This one is the size of Ryan's palm!


A special shout out to the public bath houses is also in order. Ryan got to go twice, and luckily I only had to once. They have a time set aside for women and then the men. They just have a big open room with no stalls. They have an area where you sit on a bucket to rinse and scrub over and over. It has a shower head, and extra bucket and soaps. After you scrub and rinse a few times they have a giant bathtub that fits 5-6 people where you just sit and relax. It was actually very relaxing and not nearly as weird as I thought it would be. Of course Ryan loved it.