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