Japan Reflection

After being in Taiwan I figured Japan would be similar, but with more people.  I was wrong.  They drive on the wrong side of the road.  I am not sure why this was a big difference for me since it was not my first time in a country that drives on the other side.  I was not familiar with many of the car brands.  There was a lot more cars on the road than we saw in Taiwan.  We did not see many scooters at all, only motorcycles.  Taxis had automatic doors which was new to me.  All most all of our travel was by train and subway.  The amount of people was crazy at rush hour.  We were stuck on crowded trains and even were separated once.

Worker were typically dressed in suits and were more conservative than in Taiwan. Bowing, everyone bows when entering and leaving places even the train.  We saw many initial meeting and saw how younger people or people with lower status bowed lower than the other person.  I even found myself nodding unconsciously by the end of the trip when thanking people.

I thought that Japanese would be a little easier to learn, but I still only learned simple phrases.  There was a lot less English spoken and written in Japan.  The number of people who could speak a little English was low.  Ordering food and asking for directions was not easy.

Again I found a lot food that I liked.  There was a lot less menus with pictures or in English.  Dr. Laurence had to let us know what things were often.  I did not try as many different foods in Japan, but we did have a lot of dinners with set multi-course menu.  There were course that had odd dishes.  I did not like the Ramen that we had at the museum because it was very salty and a little fishy.  I liked the Ramen I had at the spicy noodle place.  It was like chop suey soup.  The hotel we stayed at the most served hotdogs for breakfast every morning which I really liked, but it was weird.  

Overall Japan was really cool to see.  I was a little disappointed in some of the company visits.  The presenters were scripted and could not answer our questions.  Many visits were public tours and they did not go into detail about how the business operates.  My favorite company visit was the Buddhist alter making shop.  My favorite cultural activities were sumo and the Atomic Bomb Museum.  I also enjoyed learned about the religion and seeing the shrines/temples.  The university visit was nice, but it was a lot easier to talk with the students in Taiwan.