why on earth why is Colonel Sanders wearing the Japanese samurai clothes
this is a blue-eyed samurai that is the coolest KFC I've ever seen
Ok, that gets a thumbs up from me welcome to Japan these are my top five culture
shocks my name is Anming I'm from America but I first came to Japan in
2015 and spent several years living here greetings from Tokyo okay so if I were
to really go through everything that shocked me this would be a really long
list so I had to narrow it down and on top of that I've already spent many
years living in China so a lot of my experiences were cushioned by the fact
that I already lived in a closeby Asian country yet still I find Japan to be
quite unique amongst its neighbors and in a good way some of these shocks were
positive shocks some of them not so positive but this country never ceases
to surprise me so here are the five things that I thought were rather
shocking about living in Japan as a Western person I don't like to be the
kind of person that sits here and complains about a country especially a
country that I love very very much but I do find Japan to be very unique
sometimes a little strange exciting all of the above
so we'll start today with food this is the famous guobaorou from the
northeast of China lemony chicken flavored chicken hmm smells good as I
said I've spent many years living in China before I made the trip over to
Japan and made the move over here and before I had come to Asia I was such a
picky eater there was a long long list of things that I would not touch and
then coming over here I saw those things and I refused I resisted for the longest
time but somehow they got me and when they got me the first time I may not
have liked it but I slowly developed a taste for some of these as I saw them
weird food items and they grew on me and I stopped resisting and I started to
embrace it a little bit what should you do if you're having a bad day eat ice
cream this is matcha flavored ice cream and
the first time I heard about this I thought that sounds disgusting why would
you want green tea flavored ice cream and then I tried it and I was addicted
from that point on this stuff is great am I gonna eat it with a spoon
nah just dig in
mmm-hmm I started eating those Kit Kats and from then on it was game over
(my mistake it actually started in the 25th year of the Showa Era, 1950)
This is something you don't find a lot it's kind of like old Japan and
there's not a lot of it anymore
and of course something that is oh so very shocking to those of us that grew
up in the Midwest is the sheer number of people walking around on this small
densely populated island I don't think I really notice sometimes as I walk
around now that I'm so used to it just how many people there are but in the
beginning like this footage from 2015 I was really quite shocked I was really
quite enthralled by the fact that there were so many people around me and yeah
some weird people too but to be honest in the many years I've lived in Japan
I've never had any bad experiences on trains but perhaps I'm just lucky in
that it is seriously butt to butt like back to back super crowded and that's
probably the most Awkward feeling of all is on that commuter train in the morning
if you have to take it which I did go into Japanese school literally being
butt to butt with other people most awkward thing ever but I guess just like
anything else you get used to it yeah I'm still not used to that I still don't
like that to be honest yet another thing on the long list of Japanese things I
resisted in the beginning and then caved into eventually is Japanese fashion and
I had resisted that very strongly in the beginning because I thought it was
overly feminized and just not my style and then slowly over time
I just let it creep in more and more into my wardrobe until today
I may have bought some things here maybe but I can't confirm or deny if I bought things here or not
no joke this is a store for dogs clothes
so with the pet boom in Japan everybody's getting stuff for their
animals everybody's getting like little gifts and little clothes and diapers
it's basically a big baby basically treated like babies but you know when it
comes to pets you'll be willing to spend anything they even have luxury brands for pets
I'm here in Kamakura station right now
and we were supposed to meet here and this is much closer to him than me and
he just canceled because it's raining it's not raining
I can't believe it's not raining here I said it's not
raining here it didn't rain all day what are you talking about and then no reply
and I'm here it took half a day freakin it's gonna be a five-hour round-trip
ride for this five hours round-trip two and a half hours here two and a half
hours back for my friend friend sometimes there's a lot of
passive-aggressive stuff here so instead of breaking the harmony which by the way
harmony is broken already instead of getting into an argument or admitting
that he did something wrong he just wants to ghost me and actually makes it a lot worse
I'll go out by myself then and not all Japanese people are like that but there
are some that they just don't want to break the harmony when they did
something wrong even it's not a good trait whoever has that
trait my boyfriend's not like that he's Japanese but there are people that do
that and even in China too when something goes wrong and then
friendships will end suddenly because of that which I also think is unfortunate
and I guess I got stood up for nothing absolutely nothing because it looks
really nice outside it looks really nice today here we are at Nippon rent a car in Guam
This is our car we're gonna drive here I haven't driven in six months but it's better
than he has driven in ten years so I'm gonna take this one sorry this is my
first time driving in Asia by hey it shouldn't be too different than driving
at home alright welcome to Guam welcome to our car let's do our best
sorry you can't drive you have no license
Here we go
that is what the Japanese call a mama chari mama chari is a bicycle I guess
some mothers I've seen fathers use it too where they got a car seat in the back
for the kids. It's kind of like the equivalent of a car seat for a car but
like I told you like I said only 6% of people have cars here so that's how
people get around
everyone's own individual experiences in Japan are going to vary greatly
depending on who they are where they are and what kind of people they interacted
with but at the end of the day the best thing you can come here with is an open
mind and realize that it's not a perfect place and you're going to be met with a
lot of challenges and things that surprise you so if you have the dream to
come to Japan I highly recommend that you do that but at the end of the day
nobody invited me to come here I just found a way to come myself