Darkside Dreamland

In the last month since I have been back in Grand Junction, I have finally really started to notice those little differences between here and my experience in Nagoya, Japan while working for AEON.

There is a huge service difference at restaurants and even fast food places between the US and Japan. At all bout 2 or 3 places in Nagoya the wait staff was very friendly, energetic, and seemed to be putting in a lot of work at the crap work they had to do. Now it does help to be white in these situations, actually let me rephrase that, it helps to not be the same as the other 99% of the country. Most people get a bit excited when they get to help the foreigner that comes in that day. So staff is very very helpful. However, at anything above fast food, while the service is very friendly and accurate, you don’t get checked on.

In the US most places I go have staff members who could care less, and would probably rather kill you than make another plate of food. At least that holds true for most fast food places and Denny’s. But no matter where you are you will get checked on every 5-10 minutes. Your drink, coffee, water will not be empty here, a problem I experienced sometimes in Japan, and I drink very slowly.

The experience on the street is also very different.

In my local ward and neighborhood in Nagoya I liked to walk around places most of the time. I also frequently went down a number of side streets and alleys. This didn’t really amuse the Japanese locals. I had more than a few people cross the street to avoid me and shield their children from me. It felt kind of cool to have “evil gaijin” powers the first time… It got old after that real fast.

Now back in my big town/small city environment things are a bit reversed. I don’t cross the street to avoid people, but I am much more suspicious of people as possibly being criminals who will stab and shoot me soon. Of course, not carrying $200-$300 dollars worth of yen in my wallet makes me a little more secure. But the really low crime rate and general fear of gaijin as being the criminals makes you feel really safe in Japan.

Oh yeah, sushi is also huge here. It amazes me how many sushi shops are around in Grand Junction, Colorado. There is certainly sushi available in Japan, but there were far fewer sushi specific restaurants per capita in my local area than in my hometown. Sushi is readily available, you can buy it at every store… But Japanese people don’t… At least not nearly as much as we picture them. The sushi specialty shops in Japan were also much higher class than the ones available in GJ. So far I have never seen a line of well dressed people outside a sushi place here.

Well just a couple of things I noticed, I’ll rant more about Japan soon, I promise. I might even give better details next time.