I just said "mama-san gomen nasai"
someone hit us and then they're always so smooth
one for soap one for adult products one for toys everything playing at the same time
I'm just i'm just like this all the time like "shut up!"
Hey guys and girls welcome to Tokyo this is your frilly flashy fashion reporter
cathy cat and today we're gonna go hit the streets of Tokyo and ask the foreigners that currently are
residing in Japan what their culture shock is they have a lot of years of experience under
their belts and we might get some very interesting answers so let's go and ask foreigners in Japan
Okay where are you from?
Hey i'm from Austria - Austria, okay how long have you been in Japan for now
I have been here for more or less two years
I hope it's gonna turn for the better for now now
when you came here two years ago what surprised you the most in Japan what was like your surprise Japan moment?
I mean two years ago it wasn't the first time I was here I had been here before
but the first time I came here I think it was the fact that it's so loud
like when you go past one of the pachinko places you know and it's like you just you know it's just so insanely loud
yeah I think that's what surprised me the most at first yeah
the noise surprised you pachinko places what else?
what else well just add that what you hear in the background right just the advertisement and
the crazy buses with the with the idol music you know going around that was surprising but
other than that I think everything just turned out to be as I thought it was going to turn out
Yeah everything speaks right? The machine speaks cars when they go backwards speak
yeah then you go to donkey and every like from every corner everything is just like
Noisy!
There's like five five different commercials at the same time: one for soap one for adult
projects one for toys everything playing at the same time i
Im just i'm just like this all the
time like "shut up stop talking to me" But it's fun, I like it
You get used to it yeah exactly it's just you just block it out somehow
what was your like most sensory overload moment then like for me it's always Shibuya
T he moment I stepped out in Shibuya I was like "whoa I can't"
I think it's uh it's more kabukicho uh Shinjuku you know it's the lights and then
everybody's just asking you "you want to come in? you want to do this you want to do that" you know
and like all the smells like that's what I love about Tokyo so it's just intense smells you know
Good smells? - everything I mean you have the restaurants you know like the yakitori
you know that smell and then the beer and then especially Shinjuku can smell a bit
funky too but but I kind of like that it's just a bit I don't know it's just a bit crazy
it's fun, it's full of life I like it
now you came here right during the pandemic is there
anything that's surprising that Japanese people managed to do during the pandemic?
I think they kind of weirdly kept it cool compared to to what I see back at home going
on you know I think that everybody's just you know just kind of keeping the [ __ ] together
and i'm quite frankly i'm surprised that uh that there was no real lockdown you know like
politically speaking like that we that we could I mean you know keep it easy but if you look around
every now and then you could see places open it's like wow what's going on you know so but it's been
rather balanced I think I don't know it's life is still livable it was still livable at any point I think yeah
There was no real lockdown we had like a state of emergency but it wasn't like a close your shops kind of thing
yeah exactly that surprised me for sure yeah
what did you like during that time was there anything you thought like "oh my god this is actually working really well"
ah personally for me it's that everyone's managed to wear masks
exactly I was about to say that yeah like there is no real discussion about that you know like where you have people like uh
going on riots back at home, "I'm not gonna do that" you know it's like here everybody's just
you know automatically I mean it's part of the culture sort of you know it's like
I guess that's that's why everybody's just so keen to wearing a mask you know but that is
that is a good sign I was like "hey this is pretty cool" yeah it's been
The mask culture wearing has been happening before the pandemic in Japan and I think that
definitely played a big impact on it right yeah
Okay where are you from? I'm from Liverpool in England
Oh my god - In the uk yeah yeah. - Go away, I studied in Chester so yes oh my gosh
Now I assume that 20 years ago Japan was very different to how it is now what was your kind
of culture shock that you experienced when you came
Oh that's a really good question I think it
was about cash and credit cards mostly everything was cash it was really hard to pay by credit cards
that's the biggest change and all the banks would close a certain time like the atms so I was always
always running out of cash always running out of cash because in England everything was just
payed by cards so I think that was interestingly that was the biggest culture shock um oh you get
you got stranded sometimes without cash? - Exactly especially over the new year's oshogatsu when
the banks just closed completely I would always forget to go and get my like cash for the week
so that I think honestly that was the biggest culture shock for me
yeah yeah - I mean like sometimes um it happened to me that I went to a restaurant and I just
had a card on me and they're like "you can't pay with that" and I already ate yeah what did you do?
Oh that actually did happen to me in um my local sushi restaurant I just said "mamasan
I have no cash" i'm that means like oh a "restaurant person i'm sorry if I have no cash with me"
here's my bag and all my things i'm taking my card and run to the cash machine because uh you know I
had to pay and I was honest and just needed to do that so yeah yeah so that was my biggest culture
shock it's not very exciting but it's true - No no no it's one very vital one because it's happened
to me before so that I kind of put my bag down and I had to run to the convenience store to withdraw cash
and of course we assumed that Japan is like a super technology place and like you know everybody's just paying with a chip in
their fingernail or something but actually still now still now it's um different you know
touch credit cards and stuff so yeah - that only happened to me the other year so yeah
it's still still hard there's still lots of places you can't use your card yeah
Where are you from? - Iwakuni Japan - all right so you've been born and raised here?
Oh no we're i'm from Virginia he's from Colorado - oh right now that he came to Japan here two years
ago what surprised you the most when you came to Japan?
everyone is so nice um everything is clean
I guess maybe we're just used to the united states where you know they don't take care of everything
and everyone's not so polite everywhere we go everyone's so nice to us I never feel
like they don't like me because i'm american so that's nice yeah I know
That's wonderful especially like in in Iwakuni I found there was like a really big friendship
between the people from the base and the people that live in iwakuni right - yeah we love it just
the culture and everything and then um being somewhere different and experiencing like a new
culture so I love to travel so just seeing the asian culture specifically Japanese is
amazing it opens up my mind to like new you know experiences in asia so i'm excited
Was there anything really like "oh my gosh like you couldn't have this in america" like any kind of funny moment
like the toilets the trains there's I think there's a lot of little funky things oh you
see like every kind of fashion which is really cool um I don't know I love that it's like more
baggy and relaxed but they still look very clean and like cut I don't know
it's very conservative
so everything is not for I mean not everything but most things are not form-fitting
um and all the colors are very I don't know earthy I guess - yeah it looks they look really good
like I want to look like that but I can't... can't pull it off
You're looking very good don't worry about that
well we just got here like what 20 minutes ago yeah - yeah
so um it reminds me not really like of new york like i've been in new york and
it's not as like new york feels so much more like condensed but here it's so open and there's a lot of people like
if you just look down right there there's so many people um
the flow like i've noticed the Japanese are very like disciplined and organized like all of the cars are backed in
like people are walking on the right side of the sidewalk yeah
and then just um when they're riding their bikes on the sidewalk we always get scared they're gonna hit someone or hit us and
then they're always so smooth yeah it's so cool
yeah fantastic
As someone who's lived here for several years now I find it very interesting
that if we interview people who also are residing in Japan we get very different answers than what
we usually get when we ask tourists to come to Japan the tourists first impression generally
is the toilets yay but it seems to be a lot of people here are saying now you know work
life and similar things like that that surprised them here in Japan to found that very interesting
we have done this topic before and we got a very different response and that way be sure to check
out that video if if you haven't already I hope you subscribed if not come on subscribe to us
otherwise you're missing out and check out our socials catch you soon in Tokyo bye