Daily Life in Japan

Hi everyone!

Been a bit of a slow week - classes and homework have been keeping me busy, so today I'm going to go into a few topics that are too short to each have their own blog, but are still important.

Yen (円)

A sample of the various denominations of yen

As some of you probably know, the money in Japan is known as yen. There are no dollars and cents, so when you're using yen, you don't have to worry at all about something being worth $3.18 or $24.87, because everything comes down to a single yen. However, this also means that one yen is worth far less than one dollar, so even though there's a bunch of 5000 yen and 10000 yen bills in the picture, that's not actually that much money. Currently, one US dollar equals about 108 yen, but it's easier to just think of it as about 100 yen to 1 dollar when you're trying to calculate prices. So, the bill that says 5000 yen is about $50, the 10000 yen bill is about $100, and so on.

Most Japanese people will pay in cash as opposed to credit cards or checks, so it's almost required to carry lots of cash around. When I was in America, to be safe I tried not to have more than $20 in paper money in my wallet, but now I frequently carry more than four times that on a daily basis. Additionally, Japan uses coins much more than America does, so much so in fact that I had to go buy a special coinpurse to carry them around in after I ran out of space in my regular wallet. Another difference is that although America has dollar coins, Japan's 100 yen and 500 yen coins are used much more frequently and have no paper money counterpart, which means that the lowest denomination of paper currency in Japan is equal to about $10.00. Coming from a place where I almost never used coins to a place where I have to use them every day has taken a while to get used to. 

My current collection of coins and my lovely coinpurse. If you look closely, you can see how much each coin is worth.

Commuting in Japan

A little more crowded than an average day at a train station, but not by much

Japanese people have a variety of ways to get to work. Like in America, there are some who will walk, but in a country where typhoons are a common occurrence and where summers consistently get to 95 degrees and 100% humidity, most people prefer other options.

Some people choose to bike. However, almost nobody who does so wears a helmet, which I found strange in a country that otherwise has a strong emphasis on safety. It's not uncommon to see someone bike past in a full suit on their way to work, with their bag loaded up into the basket on the front of their bike. In cities like Kyoto, however, where there are many narrow streets and few to no actual bike paths, cyclists will usually ride on the sidewalk if they have room, or otherwise hug the very edge of the street. It also seems like the laws surrounding cycling are either not very well-known or well-followed, as my university had a mandatory assembly to discuss the rules of the road that turned out to be a thirty-minute long video of bike accidents.

Cars are in an interesting position. Much like in America, people who live in urban areas tend not to use cars or own cars as often as people in rural areas do, but Japan takes this concept up to eleven. Simply renting out a parking space in a major city like Kyoto or Tokyo can often end up costing more per month than rent, so people that live in cities will rely on subways or trains to get places. Japanese cars also tend to be smaller and more box-shaped than American cars, which fits in with the Japanese ideal of conserving space wherever possible. Additionally, the United Kingdom has apparently been a bad influence on Japan when it comes to driving, as people in Japan will drive on the left side of the road instead of the correct (right) side.

A parking lot in Japan. Drivers tend to back into parking spaces instead of turning straight into them.

However, the most common method that people use to commute is almost certainly trains. Cities have extensive rail networks, with subways, express trains, and regular commuting trains weaving in and around each other. Some of you have also probably heard about the Japanese bullet train that can travel at around 200 mph and take you from one side of the country to the other in about 2 hours. So many people use the trains here that commuters will often be jam-packed into train cars like sardines in a can, where some days you have to muscle your way into an already above-capacity car to be able to get to where you need to go. It's nearly impossible to find a seat in the mornings and when work gets out, so some people have learned to fall asleep standing up during their hour-long ride to and from work. The subway that I take to get to school can be like this in the morning, but the crowd will usually thin out by the time I am coming home.

Most mornings look similar to this.

I ended up writing a bit more than I thought I was going to on those points, so I'm going to stop there for today. As always, if any of you have any questions you want to ask or just want to say something, please leave me a comment and I'll respond to you as soon as I can!

For now, though, I'll be seeing you next week! Until then,

またね！(See you soon!)