Japan, due to its location and the veil of alienation, removed not so long ago, has a very peculiar culture and traditions. Probably, everything here seems interesting. After all, the way of life is very different from ours.
According to weddinginfashion, the national religions of the Japanese are Shinto (“the way of the gods”) and Buddhism. Shintoism arose on the basis of totemic ideas of antiquity. He absorbed the cult of ancestors, as well as many traditions of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. The Buddha’s teaching was one of the most important components of the cultural flow carried by a few emigrants from the continent to the Japanese islands. True, neither in Korea nor in China did Buddhism play such an outstanding role as in Japan. The most common branch of Buddhism in Japan is Amidaism, in which the basis of the cult is the worship of the Buddha Amitabha – the ruler of the Pure Land – a Buddhist paradise. The Zen school, which preaches the achievement of the ideal of Buddhism – revealing the essence of the Buddha in oneself – by immersion in deep self-contemplation, has become widespread in Japan.
What is very pleasing in Japan (and even surprising in a good way) is safety. This is one of the safest countries on the planet. You can walk here at night through the streets and lanes without fear for your life and wallet. And even if you leave your bag somewhere, it is unlikely that anyone will be interested in it, except to hand it over to the police. Everywhere there are signs, almost all of which are duplicated in English. If you have a map – a plan of the area, even in English, they will help you find it and not get lost, or they will advise you on the best way to go.
Despite all the “ceremoniousness”, the Japanese remain very tolerant of other cultures, customs and habits. There are very few prohibitions and taboos in Japan, and even if they exist, they fit within the framework of common sense. Sometimes it comes to the ridiculous – the Japanese simply believe that visitors cannot understand how to behave in Japan, while treating tourists like children. Unlike us, the Japanese are used to doing everything as it should be: in a special place, at a set time, in an appropriate environment. Thus, if the Mount Fuji season is announced to end on August 31st and begin on July 1st of the following year, no Japanese would ever think of hiking on the slopes of Mount Fuji on September 1st.
The Japanese are very polite and reserved. They always treat guests with hospitality and may even stop you on the street and ask you to take a photo with them. Even in the largest metropolitan areas, the streets are extremely clean, there are trash cans everywhere. At the entrance to temples, some public places or private houses, it is customary to take off your shoes, and make a small bow at parting – this symbol indicates respect for the interlocutor.
The Japanese subway, namely the Tokyo subway, is not the self-moving mass of people familiar to us. People in the subway “Country of the Rising Sun”; help to move, or rather to enter the car, special workers – “pushers”. Thus, the task of these metro workers is to pack the crowd inside the cars. In total, Tokyo has 13 subway lines with a total length of 286.2 km – this is the 3rd largest network in the world (after New York and London).
Tokyo has its own Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, the latter standing on Odaiba, one of the artificial islands in Tokyo Bay. And the Japanese Eiffel Tower even surpasses the original in size by 13 m, given that due to its magnificent design, taking into account new technologies, it is 3,000 tons lighter, all 9 television stations, 5 FM radio stations are broadcast from here, and cameras installed on the tower monitor urban traffic.
Harajuku is quite common in the big cities of Japan – a style in youth fashion, a combination of several styles. “harajuku girls” are usually dressed in something unusual, even wild.
On sufficiently large streets of Tokyo, there are special corrugated yellow paths for the blind – oblong stripes indicate the direction, circles – stop before the fork, turn, street crossing.
Now in Japan, a new type of service is gaining momentum – renting pets for an hour. The fact is that for some Japanese people who love pets, but cannot keep them in their tiny apartments due to the limited size of the living space or strict rules of residence, such services at the pet store are becoming more popular every day. For approximately $140, customers can take their dogs home for the night. In this case, customers are given a daily ration of food and a plate for water, as well as a cage in which the dog will sleep.
