The trip to Japan is the most amazing trip I have ever taken. Some of this is due to the fact that Japan is a beautiful (and amazingly clean) place, but most of this is due to the people. I find that the Japanese are hospitable, helpful, honest, and efficient.
Hospitable:
- We don't speak more than five words in Japanese and we were able to communicate just fine since they were willing to try to explain anything (using Japanese, broken English, and hand signals). To some extent, the politeness is almost overwhelming.
Helpful:
- We were able to ask for directions almost anywhere. Granted, some of the directions were horrible, but not for lack of trying.
Honest:
- We went to some restaurants and ordered food without knowing the price; we found out later that we were not being charged extra for not being able to speak the language (unlike in Indonesia and Thailand).
- We took cabs from Shin-Osaka station to our hotel and back, and we were charged the exact same fare both ways.
- Japanese stood in line as a default. They don't try to cut in front of us (or yell at us) even when they realized that (1) we are slow and (2) we don't speak their language.
Efficient:
- Trains run on time (and by on time, I mean on the dot). We saw one incident in which the train did not run on time: the train employees immediately ran across tracks to fix the problem.
- Minimum signs are posted in obvious spots. No wasted effort here.
- We had almost no difficulty ordering food as restaurants have either English menus, picture menus, or ticket machines (with pictures).
All in all, I will definitely try to go back to Japan. On my next trip, I will try to spend more time in Kyoto and visit Sapporo in the winter (I don't ski, but I really want to see the gigantic snow sculptures).
BTW, the wifey took a lot of pictures as well. See some of them here!
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