JAPAN VS AMERICA... ROUND ONE!

****DISCLAIMER: Not all written here are not EXACT. Please take all references with the understanding that these are my personal experiences and outlooks. Also, some may be slight exaggeration: EXAMPLE "Everyone rides a bike. No not EVERYONE - but a good amount*****

So, in this post we are going to examine the differences in daily life between America and Japan.
Things are not HUGELY different. We have actually not had any trouble adjusting to life here. BUT, there are things that are different. Things we have had to try to adapt to and are getting to be second nature.

-- Obvious the first one I have to point out is Language. Japanese speak ... Japanese (hope you got that right!)
Many start learning English from a young age but it is very BASIC English. Think of.. spanish class in High School, in America. Many are required to take a year or two of a Foreign Language. But.. you never really LEARN it - yes, I can communicate but in spanish but I can't really hold a conversation. That's how Japanese are. They learn phrases. "My name is Yuko. I am from Oita. My hobby is soccer. Nice to meet you. See you!" Things like that.
When you go into a place, or need to ask a question we always first start with "Ego wa day-key-mas-ka" or "Ego... wa kari-mas-ka?" which means do you speak or do you understand english? (i wrote it how it SOUNDS not spelled.) Almost EVERY time the answer is "Ehhh.. CHOTTO!!!" (which means a little!!!) or they hold up their hands in an X and say "ehh... uhh... nnoooo..." So - we then try anyway haha. If you WRITE things out, they're more likely to understand but most is left to body language and charades.
They also have a different writing style. They use a combination of 3 different writing styles. Kanji, Katakana, and Hirogana. Kanji is Chinese picture symbol writing. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 kanji characters used in written Japanese!!! Hirogana is more of a cursive style writing and is based on syllables. Then there is Katakana which is a more simple for of Hirogana. There are about 45 symbols for both Hirogana and Katakana. It's very confusing because they use all three.

--Driving. Here in Japan they drive on the Left side of the road. They're driver seat is on the right side of the vehicle. Everyone ride bikes. We ride EVERYWHERE! we love it. It is still a bit confusing trying to cross the street - which way to look first. Very easy to look both ways then STILL almost get hit . Lol!

--Cooking. I can't speak for the whole country BUT from how most of the apartments are there are no STOVES. They DO exist but most common folk don't have them. They have a gas burner and a fish fryer. Many microwaves have "oven" capability, but its SO small and doesn't really work well. So, basically we don't bake. We eat a lot of fish. Fish is VERY cheap here. We can get 2 good size pieces of salmon for around 300Y. Which is like 3$. Easily 6-8$ in US. BUT beef is very expensive. it's around 7-12$ for a pound of ground beef... So, we don't eat that too often. Chicken is around same price as US - a LITTLE more expensive. Here they use EVERYTHING! People eat chicken heart, liver, skin and even cartilage.
Surprisingly rice is quite expensive but EVERYONE eats it at almost EVERY meal. Everyone has rice cookers. They don't understand cooking rice in a pot. They've just done it in a cooker since before they were born! Erika's teachers could not FATHOM that we cooked rice in a pot. They kept saying "Did it WORK? How would you do that? etc..." Forks, knifes, and spoons are not extinct. But most things are eaten with chopsticks.

--Money. Japan is a very CASH-using society. Most places do not accept credit card. No one uses credit card here (mostly). We use YEN here in japan " ¥ ". It is not exact but very close to 1¥ = 1¢. But they JUST use yen they don't have 100¢ = 1$.
So 3$ is about 300¥. or 100$ = 10,000¥. Not too hard.
Bills start at 1000¥. No smaller.
BILLS: 1,000¥, 5,000¥, 10,000¥ and more.
Coins: 500¥, 100¥, 50¥, 10¥, 5¥, and 1¥.

--People. I have to be honest here. Japanese people are SOOO much more friendly than Americans. Everyone (we have met) will do ANYTHING possible for us. Good example: Erika and I have started going to a chiropractor. A lady, Erika works with, has been taking us. We ventured out, on our bikes, to try to find the chiropractor one day. We... got a bit lost. So we asked a random guy on the road, walking. We showed him our card and said Do you know where this is. He put it in his GPS on his phone and then WALKED US - all the way there. He was like "OH!! I know, come!" It wasn't REALLY far about 5 min walk but still... Never met the guy. And things like that have happened before! I LOVE that. In America it's always about ME ME ME! What can I get from you what can you do to make ME happy. Here people genuinely care about each other.

-- Recycling. Most Americans say "WHAT'S THAT?" Haha - not really but so few do it. Here in japan it is INSANE!!! Everyday of the week (except Sat/Sunday) there is a different recycle day. One day is burnables (food, Kleenexes, TRASH stuff). One day is plastics, one day is PET bottles (plastic bottles like coke bottles), one day is paper, one day is Glass and Cans... you get the pictures. That maybe doesn't sound HORRIBLE - but here's the other thing. You buy a coke in a vending machine. When you're done, you "have to" remove the plastic label (goes in plastic), remove the lid (plastics), rinse it out, and put the bottle in the PET bottle bag. It's CRAZY! so you have to basically have 5-7 different bins or trash bags and... ugh - but we're doing our best!

Those are some main things. Ok - talk at you more soon - feel free to leave comments or ask questions :) Love yall!!!

PS - I know there are many typos and such - IGNORE!!!