Slurping Is Not Rude. Your Silence Is the Insult.
Twenty adults inhaling noodles at industrial volume, and not one of them is embarrassed. You are the only person in the room…
Read →A Country With No Trash Cans and No Trash. Pick a Lane, Japan.
Day one you are impressed. Day three you are carrying a used coffee can around a major world capital like a small pet.
Read →The Loudest Country on Earth Goes Completely Silent at 8:14 a.m.
Shops shout. Trucks sing. Election vans exist. And then 200 people press into a metal tube and produce less sound than a…
Read →Why Is There a Vending Machine on This Mountain? There Is Nobody Here.
One machine for roughly every 30 people, including in places with zero people, glowing at 2 a.m. in a rice field like a small…
Read →The Convenience Store Is Not a Shop. It Is a Public Utility With Fried Chicken.
Pay your taxes, ship your suitcase, print a document, buy a clean shirt and eat a genuinely excellent egg sandwich. At 3 a.m…
Read →You Will Be Asked Your Blood Type. Type B, We Are So Sorry.
Somewhere between the weather and your job, a Japanese person will ask about your blood. It is not medical. It is worse.
Read →Hang on — the rest of this site is in Japanese?
It is. JAPAN NOW is the English corner of 英会話学習ラボ, a site that teaches English to Japanese learners. Which means the other 600 pages are the exact mirror of this one: what Japanese people find impossible about your language, what they are taught, and where the misunderstandings actually begin. If this page was fun, that is the other half of the same joke.
Look at the Japanese side