#7 Yabai

It’s been over two weeks since I landed in Japan. Lofi hip-hop is softly pouring out of my eighteen-inch tv and I am writing on the same small table that I eat all of my meals off of and do my studying on. This table is low to the ground, so I must use a zabuton to sit at a comfortable height for my work. No chairs. Just cushion and floor. The table and the tv were provided as part of my rental agreement. The cushion was not. I drink a Strong Zero, the Japanese equivalent to a Mike’s Hard, and try to get more comfortable.

Every night, I crawl up the ladder that comes down into my living room so I can get cozy in my traditional Japanese futon, complete with a random assortment of blankets, throws, and pads that I have accumulated while trying to find out what is comfy and warm here. At night, if the urge to relieve myself hits, I crawl back down that same ladder, a treacherous proposition for the half-asleep and potentially inebriated. Every morning, to avoid moisture settling into my futon, I roll it up, the Japanese equivalent of “making a bed.” When the laundry needs done, I wash it in the washing machine and hang my clothes out to dry on a line outside my window. If it’s windy or rainy, I try and dry my clothes inside. Sometimes my clothes still end up on my downstair neighbor’s balcony.

The first night I took a bath here, I couldn’t understand why the shower heads were in the middle of the room. And then it finally hit me. The entire room was the shower. I expected the futon and the zabuton. I expected the half-bath to be separated from the main bathroom. I expected the singing toilets with their heated seats and jets of warm water right up the keister. I expected the tiny kitchenette without an oven and the barbie clubhouse style living arrangement…but I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined the entire bathroom was meant to be showered in. To make things just a little extra crazy, I discovered from one of the other Americans living here in Japan that not only was the entire room the washroom, but also that the entire room was metal so you could hang up magnets for your showering accoutrements. Just stick your bar of soap on the wall why don’t you?

My living situation is just one very small aspect of the endless array of culture shocks that greet me everyday of my new life living in Japan. I could probably fill an entire book on the experiences that I’ve already had in my short time here so far, but I don’t have the mental fortitude or the word count to publish that all here, so this blog post will be a little different from my usual. Rather than go into minute details about my travels, I will take the next thousand words or so to go over the biggest shocks to the system, the most interesting of my mini-adventures, and the greatest revelations in my experiences so far. So, without further ado, let’s get to this list.

Starting in no particular order:

• Getting judged for what you put in your shopping cart. It happened almost immediately. My first time in a grocery store, I couldn’t read many of the labels, so I just started grabbing whatever looked good off the shelf along with a few comfort foods. Sure, I cook Japanese food quite often back in the states, but knowing what kombu, mirin, and wakane are only gets you so far here. The aunts and uncles were judging me hard that first shopping trip, especially when I had to have a worker come all the way to the front because I didn’t have a card for their store and didn’t speak enough Japanese to communicate that I didn’t know how to pay. Thankfully, he was a patient and polite gentleman.

• Which leads me to number two – you need a card for everything here. This is a cash-based society, and coins and bills are the primary form of payment. Almost every store I have visited has had a point card, a special debit card that is only useful at that store, or a loyalty reward system of some sort. The Japanese prize loyalty, and nowhere is that reflected better than in their stores. I have now collected approximately nine cards since I first arrived…and I wish I was joking. I’ve gotten good at saying “お金は大丈夫ですか？” which is probably not the proper way of saying it, but whatever. It gets the point across. And I really don’t want any more cards please and thank you.

• The food is amazing. And I’m not talking just about restaurant food in the city. Almost every single meal I’ve eaten since I’ve gotten off the plane is on another level of tasty. From the mom-and-pop ramen shop slurping noodles with the Japanese salarymen to the grandfather chain-smoking his cigarette and talking mad shit while serving us up some okonomiyaki to the convenience store onigiri and grocery store bentos…everything is unique and tasty. So much so that dropping $70 on a single night of food and drinks at the local izakaya is so very easy to do, even when the normal meal here costs only around $4 or $5 USD. Almost everything that has touched my lips has been amazing…well…

• Maybe almost everything. Turns out the prefecture I moved to, Ibaraki prefecture, is the birthplace of natto. You know…the viral Japanese food that makes the average westerner gag. If you haven’t heard of this food yet, let me try and use my command of the English language to describe it. It smells like feet. Or cheese. Maybe cheesy feet. It’s got the texture and consistency of snot and strings of it float up to your mouth like that cheese in The Goofy Movie, but the worst version of that. Now, to be fair to my new home, the taste of natto isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever had. When I mix it with a little soy sauce or a little mustard, it has an alright taste. But the natto sushi I bought at the Kasumi might be the only thing I’ve eaten in Japan so far that made me sick. Not my scene. An acquired taste to be certain. Ibaraki…I’ll learn to love it for you.

• How about a positive? I really wanted to visit shrines and temples when I got here, I use to be a practicing Buddhist after all and have been fascinated with Shintoism since watching Studio Ghibli movies as a young kid. But did you know that they have little stamp books just for visiting religious sites? These fun little tourist tokens are called goshuin (御朱印) and are sort of proof of spiritual connection. You collect these bits of stamps and calligraphy in a goshuincho (御朱印帳) and they usually include the date of your visit, the enshrined deity or Buddha, and some official stamps. At some of the larger ones, they’ll even do a full design in your book, a little piece of art in and of itself. And what’s the price for this little proof of pilgrimage you might ask? 400-500 yen. Throw in a spiritual charm for good luck (like I did at my hometown’s Inari shrine) and you’re spending about 1,500 yen. That’s about the same price as a Big Mac meal in America for a little piece of cultural history. A real souvenir to go home with. And maybe some prosperity down the road to boot.

• Most Japanese people don’t really believe in Shintoism, but most people still practice it (“Other Religions”). When I went to the Kasama Inari shrine, with it’s 500 year old wisteria still not quite in full bloom, there wasn’t a whole lot of business going on in the street. But there were still a couple of spiritual patrons of the Inari deity throwing their five yen in (supposedly a lucky number) and praying for good fortune. Some side notes from watching these people: walk through the Torii gate but avoid the middle section (that’s for the spirits); bow twice, clap twice, pray, and bow again; don’t forget to tip the deity; and if there are ladles out, use those. Surprisingly, there were no ladles and no one else was purifying themselves before entering the shrine, so I suppose the deities forgive those who want to avoid getting their hands cold in the early spring. I suppose.

• All the words I learned on Duolingo were useless. All the stock phrases I got from Rosetta Stone meant nothing. My best language learning resources were the Genki Textbooks and the random Japanese YouTubers who like to teach practical Japanese. The only thing I learned from Rosetta and Duolingo was how to read kana…which I suppose I am still thankful for. Still, no amount of studying on those apps will replace a good Japanese teacher. Something I am trying to find here desperately. Because never in my life have I had to use more of my brain to communicate than in this country. A year of self-study might have put me in the top thirty percent of the new teachers with my company, but nowhere near good enough to carry out my day-to-day life here without support.

Which boils down to my biggest reflection: moving to Japan is probably 100,000 times different from visiting. Japan is a beautiful country. Immediately, I am taken aback by its absolute splendor, history seeps from every corner of this country. The plum blossoms stir whimsy, the stoic pagodas stoic reflection, and the mountains are an endless vista of satori for the spiritually minded. The people too are beautiful. Within the convenience stores, the shops, and the stations, everyone is super friendly, super agreeable, and tries their very best to be helpful (even when the language presents itself as a major barrier). But moving to this country is not for the faint of heart.

Bureaucracy is the name of the game in Japan and dealing with bureaucracy when you don’t speak the language well is best suited for pencil-pushing masochists. Getting a zairyu (residence) card took hours, even with an interpreter, and every single form had to be done multiple times because of minor mistakes. Garbage collection is intense and highly scrutinized. You can’t put your plastic bottles out with your burnables, your burnables need to go in a specific-colored bag, and lord help you if you put any non-aluminum metal in with your recyclables. Got glass? That only goes out on Wednesdays. Got a broken TV? Get your ass to city hall and get a special stamp, because that cannot go out with the normal garbage.

When you don’t speak the language, even something as simple as getting gas for your car becomes a mental exercise. Oh yeah…and you have to drive with rules and regulations you weren’t grown up around. What color is a stop sign? Still red thankfully…but it’s a triangle here. Not an octagon. And there are stops marked only by the Japanese “止まれ.” So, taking the car gives you anxiety. Take the bus? Ever been yelled at by a bus driver who thinks you didn’t pay your fare? You will in Japan. Ever been “tsssked” by a salaryman who can’t believe you didn’t know the exact fare necessary to get to the train station? You will in Japan. Ever been starred at every single time you go outside your apartment. Maybe that won’t happen in Tokyo or Osaka, but in less popular areas like Kasama, that’s going to happen. A lot.

And there is the unfortunate ugly head of racism. While pretty much everyone I have met have been nothing but kind, there is still overt and obvious racism here. The sort where no one will sit next to you on the train. The sort where people mean mug you when you are walking to your apartment. The sort where people will open their blinds and watch you walk by their bike, making sure you don’t steal it. To say it has given me a new perspective on what it is like for my students back home is an understatement. I never really understood racism. I thought I did, but until you live with it, until you are the true minority with years’ worth of cultural baggage on your back, I don’t think anyone could ever really know. If there is nothing else from this experience, I would say that this was my biggest take away.

I lied. I don’t want to end on a bummer. So, let’s wrap this up with my favorite moment so far. Walking into the grocery store, me and another American obviously stick out like a sore thumb. This little Japanese boy stares at us, does a double take, and then with the biggest shit-eating grin he can muster, he shouts “Hello!” at us. Every single person around us laughed, including us foreigners. I smiled and gave him a little “Hello!” and a wave as well. The kid was beaming outside of the store, and it restored my heart a little bit.

No matter where you live, kids are kids. Kids are free from the shackles of expectation or racism. They only know how people respond to them. And I sincerely hope that my presence in this country will be to the benefit of these children. Because I know, they are most certainly going to be helping me learn the ways of this strange world. Together, maybe we can make things just a little bit brighter.

The post is unfortunately too long to end with entomology. So let’s be brief. Yobai and yabai are drastically different words. The latter means “holy shit.” The latter is more complicated, but it basically means “night stalker.” Fun sleeps friends.

Works Cited

“Other Religions.” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/other-religions. Accessed on 2025 March 31.