First off, congrats on settling in ヽ(´∇｀)ﾉ

Second... idk, I kind of just want to know what you think of living in Japan so far. Is it what you expected? Is there anything surprising about living there/culture shock stuff? (I heard that they do sales on unsold meats/produce etc. around closing time! Where I live in the US, stores just throw away food that didn't get sold, so that was surprising to me... things like that.)

I guess what I'm saying is, I'd love to hear more about what living in Japan is like and what your thoughts on it are! I know there's lots of "gaijin living in Japan" blogs, but most of those people have been living there for years and their posts are written more like "here's some tips if you're thinking about living in Japan!" than their actual opinions.

Hmm, my general thoughts...

On a whole, Japanese people and Japanese society is way, way nicer and LESS STRESSFUL than anyone ever gives them credit for. For example, in all urban areas there's a specially-patterned line in the middle of the sidewalk so blind people can walk on it and be sure they're not about to step off into the street on accident. I went to pay my bill at the bank, and the bank lady just immediately led me to a machine, showed me how it worked and paid it for me. A cashier thought I was totally blind (white cane + sunglasses) so she REALLY REALLY carefully, with a big smile, slowly put the change into my hand. Classes are taught REALLY slowly compared to classes in Sweden, people really don't seem like they're in a rush most of the time and no one has been pushy (super trying to sell us stuff etc) except for -gasp- foreigners. I've only been here a week and I've already had about 10 random strangers do super nice things for me out of nowhere, stuff like a businessman walking super fast sees that we haven't noticed you have to push the "walk" button so he just pushes it as he walks by and before we can say "thanks" he's already gone.

And at least where I'm living they're all... very unserious. For example, I went to talk with a teacher for the first time today since I accidentally missed his first class due to not knowing what time it was at. I thought the whole point was that we'd talk about if my Japanese was even good enough to take the class or not, instead he ended up asking me about what I was planning on doing after graduation, reassuring me that people with bad eyesight can get jobs etc etc and didn't mention ANY of the class stuff!!

The biggest culture shock thing has been how optimistic everyone is. I went on a "tour" to a local area (Arahama) that was completely obliverated by an earthquake + tsunami like 6 years ago. It used to be a completely normal Japanese town packed full of houses and shops, now it's literally just fields of grass, even the trees are gone (it used to be famous for pine trees). And people going on that tour as well as people we saw there giving the tour, despite most of them coming from the area or otherwise having some ties to it, were COMPLETELY happy and optimistic, like it was just another fun field trip. The only real serious times was when they were giving a short speech about basically how and why they were doing the tour; even during a much longer speech describing all about who used to live where and so on wasn't serious.

About the technology... Nothing's been too shocking (there's some weird stuff, like the busses can't accept and give you change back if you accidentally put too many coins in) EXCEPT we went into a clothing shop and it was totally self-check out in that you put your entire basket of clothes in the machine, AND THE MACHINE CAN EVEN SHORTEN PANT LEGS AND STUFF FOR YOU, and then you give the machine your bills and it gives you change and stuff. Also I was shocked that you can buy doujinshi in normal bookshops; there's also entire shops full of only doujinshi (sadly none of it was good and it all looked the same).

Oh the other shock is that no one actually gives a shit if you're using "polite" or "impolite" Japanese. No old people, no teachers, no people my age, no one's said a single thing about either my wife basically never using polite language (she barely knows any) or me messing up and using impolite. So far no one's stared at us and called us foreigners or anything either, kids aren't even doing it (but it's still early in our stay so who knows). People DO stare if we do "Japanese stuff", we've eaten out in town twice now just sitting down at random places and eating Japanese food (nattou/sushi) and people stare.

They laugh at you if you say either something that sounds "super Japanese" OR if you say something correct but that Japanese people just don't say (ex. I said "I think that's ugly" and I got laughed at because Japanese people would never say "ugly" because it's too rude, they'd instead say "it's not cute" etc). But no one's ever laughed at me for making any mistakes, they just pause and try to understand what I said. And they understand me 99% of the time even when I say something reaaally wrong.

So basically everything everyone's ever told me about coming to Japan and using/learning Japanese is totally wrong. Maybe it was true 10, 20 years ago I don't know, but now I'm wondering maybe it's only in the really huge cities (Tokyo etc) that everyone else is going to. Sendai's pretty big in my opinion but you don't really hear about foreigners living there...

Oh and also food is SUPER CHEAP!!!!!! You can have a whole meal (made at home / semi-premade) for $2-3 USD just fine!

The cheapest food I've found so far has been sprouts (like 50 yen and under for a big bag) and nattou (73 yen for 3 packs; 1 pack is a meal). You can also buy "old" or bruised fruit cheap whenever the shop has it.　The problem seems to be that you have to know exactly what you want, then you have to find the store that has it. Like, this store has rice a lot cheaper than that other store; this store stocks soybeans and that other one doesn't. Another surprizing thing: convenience stores will give you hand wipes and chopsticks about half the time, if you buy food. Sometimes I get only hand wipes, sometimes only chopsticks, sometimes nothing and I'm basically always buying the same thing (pre-made onigiri and maybe a drink) so I'm not sure what their criteria is. But in Sweden you usually have to pay for cutlery and they're certainly not just giving it to you without asking.

Oh another thing... in Sweden almost every shop is either a café or clothing shop, but in Japan it's ACTUALLY varied. You have pharmacies, various types of restaurants (though usually your choices are "western food", "ramen", "yakitori", "bars"), electronic shops, shoe shops, tie shops, tea shops, bag shops, wig shops, "cleaning shops" etc. Though the most common shops are convenience stores, in-between those there's almost no duplicate types of shops. And there's some weird stuff there too, like in a game/video rental shop you could also buy (? rent?? I'm hoping it wasn't rental) ANIME PLAYING CARDS. Like, rare Dragonball Z cards. And it might just be me, but I'm not really getting the impression that people are being looked down on for whatever type of work they do. Like, in America, you might think bad of someone for being a mechanic or farmer or whatever but I really get the feeling that in Japan everyone realizes we NEED people with varied jobs etc. I've already seen a ton of "embrace differences!" which, while it might not be true when you're growing up bullied in school, seems to be more or less true when you're an adult in general society. So far.

So pretty much it's the exact opposite of everything I've ever heard about Japan. :o I've always heard that the Japanese people are super uptight, blunt, workaholics, don't like people who are "different" etc. so it's really good that that's just a bunch of stereotypes, and that the whole 出る釘は打たれる (the nail that sticks up must be hammered down) expression isn't all that true anymore... it really sounds like they enjoy diversity there! I mean, people over here would probably just stare at someone with a white cane and sunglasses or make comments, so it's nice that they go out of their way to help people who might be in need (whether they actually are in need or not).

Also it's a huge relief that nobody cares very much about polite language. I don't have any interest in living in Japan, but I do want to visit someday, and one of my biggest fears is accidentally coming off as rude because I used the wrong word or something like that.

The cheap food prices is also surprising. You would think it would be higher because of import taxes and stuff, but I guess not?! I can't even remember the last time I bought something that was the USD equivalent of 50-75 JPY. Is it just the food and drink that's cheap, or does everything else (like toiletries, clothes etc.) have a pretty low price too?

Are the little varied shops like mom-and-pop/locally owned stores, or are they part of bigger chains/companies? Trading card and doujinshi shops sound pretty cool, but it's already embarrassing enough buying yaoi doujinshi online... I can't imagine buying something like that in person...

Sorry if I'm being nosy, I just never bothered to research what Japan's food/culture is like aside from reading a few (English) articles here and there, so I'm really excited to be able to talk to someone who's actually living there.

(P.S. I remember you said you were wanting to stop using English completely... do you know when you're wanting to start doing that so I can try to write my comments in something other than English?)

Well, I'm not sure I've bought any imported food yet — it's not just "Japanese" food, but literal food that comes from your same prefecture that's actually easiest to find. In say, Sweden or America you normally have to hunt around to find anything actually made in the country, right? Here it's like the majority of the food is coming from either your or the neighbouring prefecture, aside from some things that very famously come from other prefectures (ex. a bunch of the "raw" dairy products are all from Hokkaido). So like, I haven't yet even seen rice, soybeans or sprouts that DON'T come from Japan — but I've seen beef that comes from America. I think the American beef was in fact cheaper than the Japanese but I don't trust American anything, especially not American food, so lol. And I haven't yet seen American pork or anything, only beef.

There are *some* rude people or people who just plain completely ignore you BUT it's so very clear that those are people who act that way to EVERYONE they don't personally already know, not just foreigners. And that that's just "them". Like, the shop closest to my house is super tiny and cramped, and run by two old people who won't even say hello and who just mumble the price and stuff. Not just to us but also to our Japanese teacher who shopped there. They seemed kinda... "down" in general. Then one day I passed by and they were really excitedly and loudly laughing/talking with a young lady who had a newborn baby and stuff that they obviously knew really well. And one guy who was rude and bumped into me at the train station etc was ALSO so rude he actually went in the wrong way to the ticket booth and they told him to go the other way, etc. And those guys are SOOO rare out of all the normal / uncaring / nice people. So it's kinda like that.

My wife says she gets stared a lot when she goes out alone, but she's also really tall (way taller than the average Japanese male) among other things so we're not sure if it's really "wow a foreigner" or "wow a tall person" etc.

Polite language is so... man, I even turned on the TV and watched a news clip about some old lady selling oden on the street in Tokyo and the old lady herself switched between informal and formal Japanese during the clip!! I had a class with Japanese people in it and they ALL were using only informal with me even though we were meeting for the first time.

In general everything is cheap except the public transportation (which is still cheaper than in Sweden but definitely not cheap enough considering you could still walk this distance in 10-20 minutes just fine). Most of the clothes are expensive but those are all DESIGNER clothes, you have to find the "everyday clothes shops" (even secondhand clothes are expensive if they're designer clothes). They also have a surprizing amount of "cheat" stuff, like I bought soft sort of sweatpant-ish material pants that look like suit pants but were cheap. If I just ironed them they'd be perfectly suitable for a job interview.

From what I've seen so far, I'd say half to 2/3rds of the shops are chain shops BUT that still might mean there's only one of that particular chain shop in the whole area, it's not like one on every street or anything. In the housing districts more of the shops are mom-and-pop, but what I notice the most there is actually health clinics and dentistries!

Questions are fine!!! Ask away!!!

I'm waiting for my wife to stop constantly using English/Swedish with me : / I keep trying to get her to use Japanese and she just.... yeah.

*A few days later*

Hmm I can see the "blunt" thing but the real problem is probably that they have an entirely different idea of what's a problem to say or not. Ex. in America people don't like mentioning death, sex, toilet problems, finances, a person's weight... so it's rude to ask how much money someone makes or ask them how their will is, or say "so that's why you're fat, since you're eating cake every day for lunch!". But Japanese people are like Swedes in that they know we're all just "people" (and on top of that, "living creatures") so they don't feel that the same things are conversational problems. Even a squirrel will get fat if it eats cake every day so what's the harm in pointing it out, etc.

By now I think Japanese people're probably a lot LESS thinking about how to not hurt someone's feelings etc than we like to say. I was in a ryokan this weekend and NO ONE, like none of the guests and not the staff either, were careful about being quiet when talking or walking around in the middle of the night. And they certainly weren't treating the hotel as "sacred" or anything despite that it had a history of 700 years. At shops you leave your wet umbrellas by the entrance (either hooked on to a trashcan-like thing or in a holder meant for this); I went to the convenience store today and there were so many put in the wrong way and not even closed properly, that they actually had a staff member out there fixing them all.

Based on a bunch of stuff like this so far I think it's actually all about training YOURSELF to put up with other people in a way. Like, YOU shouldn't be getting mad if someone's loud at night because having fun and being loud is just natural so you should just deal with it. But at the same time you yourself also have the right to be loud. In the end, you shouldn't even think it's something annoying in the first place and if you do then there's something wrong with you. Kinda like that...

So far the things I'VE thought were maybe rude to talk / ask about (ex. someone was going to give me something so I had to ask about exactly what was in the gift) they thought wasn't a problem at all, and the only thing anyone's ever seemed like it was a problem to ask ME about was just confirming my gender (it was dark, raining, and I had a hat/scarf on AND we were doing the "love umbrella" so lol).

The things I thought were surprizing that people were just out and frank about were ex. teenage pregnancies and what do you think about having kids out of wedlock etc ("In Japan it's really bad, if a girl gets pregnant, say like in University, the school actually forces her to quit school and she can't go anywhere, but in America and Europe it's a lot better, there are even school daycares there"), also one guy I just met was super touchy-feelly and touching me on the arm/shoulder/hair etc like alllll the time lol. I don't mind but it was really surprizing.

About personal versus private talk in general... I think it's up to the personality. Most people are like Swedes and keep topics entirely separate, ex. if you're there for club then you're there for "club" and you mostly only talk about club stuff. That doesn't mean they have a problem with talking about their opinions or private life in general, it's just that "club isn't the time/place for that" or "I don't want to think about that right now" etc. Then you meet other people who'll tell you all about their problems with their girlfriend or younger brother even though you just met ten minutes ago. People often talk about the "Japanese robots" where ex. you switch off your personality when you go to work; I think that's also a personality thing because some people do it and others (usually the happier people) definitely don't.