Gulliver's Travels - Part 2 - Japan

I was at ICRA 2009 couple of weeks ago which was held at Kobe, Japan. I took a week off after the conference to see Japan. Armed with my Lonely Planet (which, needless to say, is awesome) and a marked doggedness to stay vegetarian, I traversed from Kobe to Osaka to Nara to Kyoto to Tokyo with a little stint at the northern tip of the Japanese alps. It was a very revealing experience for me and I thought I should put down my thoughts of the trip afresh. I took close to a thousand pics and will refer to them as and when I think they aid my monologue better. Let me start by some things that struck me.

Technology Penetration

I'm an engineer at heart. Can't fault me at fawning over the country's love for technology. This is the first thing that struck me. We all hear about it all the time, but seeing it in action is a surreal experience. Most of us have come across the famous japanese toilet seat that can do much more than rest your posterior. We have also heard of the shinkansen bullet trains that travel at speeds upto 200 miles an hour. But the devil is in the details. Every thing is designed with much thought. Most of the seats in the trains could automatically or manually turned the other way depending on which direction the train was traveling. There were vending machines that would serve you freshly brewed espresso - and I actually mean freshly brewed; it would grid the beans, pour a shot of espresso, add some milk and sugar etc. Similarly, there was another vending machine that would serve ramen noodles that was quickly heated up then and there. It was the rainy season, and my hotel had this little device in the lobby where you put your umbrella in and it would seal the umbrella with a plastic bag so that the umbrella wouldnt drip. This is what I mean by putting thought into everything they do. I took a video of a car being parked in one of them robot parking lots. They are fairly common as well. I'm not sure if I would be comfortable with the idea of my car being transported up and down some building by some automated assembly but it was cool to watch. Everyone loves their cellphone; and use them to do anything but talk. Most of the time they are typing stuff into it (I can only presume they are texting in japanese) or playing games on them. It is also not uncommon for grown men in suits to pull out their PSP on the train and go at it with the vigor of a little kid.

Japanese Women
I'm a singly guy and maybe this is something I noticed especially, but anyone would be hardpressed not to notice the women. In one word, Japanese women are dolls. Everyone is petite and in shape, look not a day older than 20 and are always made up. It amazes me how pefect they look be it 9 AM, 12 Noon, 5 pm or 10 pm at night. All of them look like they just got out of the beauty salon. The other noticeable thing is that everyone (well, almost everyone) wears heels. No one complains about how they cant walk in them. And it doesnt matter if they are going shopping, going for a stroll or going to the night club - the heels are always there. I could go on and on about the virtues of Japanese women, but I'll stop and move on to other things.

Culture of Interaction
The Japanese culture is I think one that is at crossroads between the modern westernized ideals and what has been in vogue for ages. I should start off by saying they are extremely helpful and kind - atleast to foreigners. Everytime I asked for directions, the person would not just point me in the right direction but take the effort to lead me to the place I was going dropping everything he/she was doing. If you ask them something, you can see the regret in their faces if they are not able to help you adequately. While the language is a barrier, they try their level best to help you in any and every way possible.
It is also an experience to see two Japanese people interact. Firstly, they have an acute sense of hierarchy. Looking at two people interact, you can clearly see who the senior is in the interaction. They also have extreme respect for each other and every interaction consists of a series of bows. It is especially interesting (almost funny) to see an exchange of business cards. The person bows before giving the card, after giving the card, after reading the card and so on.

Language
The language is a huge barrier for any foreigner visiting Japan. Even in most urban areas, it is very hard to get by without knowing Japanese. Even though I stayed only for a week, I picked up bits and pieces of little things so that I could get by - especially things like no meat (nikku nai), excuse me (simi masen), one beer (beeru hitotsu) and thank you (oregato gozaimas). The last phrase you will certainly get bored of; entering any shop or exiting it, going to a restaurant or the local corner store, you will constantly hear gozaimas from multiple directions.
One of the things I learned late in the travel was that they can actually read/write english quite well. They are just not comfortable conversing in English. This suggests that I couldve benefited immensely by writing stuff down instead of jumping around trying my version of the sign language in vain most of the time.

It was also interesting for me that Japanese is written in two scripts - Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana. Kanji is apparently chinese characters for japanese syllables. One of the guys from our lab who was at ICRA knew how to write in kanji but couldnt pronounce it. This is something that is very unintuitive to me but I suppose the language could be non-phonetic like English. Many times he wrote it down and the person could understand what he had written.

Alright, I think I have rambled on enough for a day - I'll get back to it tomorrow with more specifics of each city I went to and things I did there.