Today I was sitting at some cafe tables just outside the city library, inside an atrium connected to the library. It is an area I sit at often when I visit the library. Usually I am the only foreigner there, but today there was another foreigner, a young woman, at a table next to mine. After a while, she called to me: "Excuse me, can you watch my things while I use the restroom". I said yes and kept my eye on things until she got back.
Two things tell me she was a newbie. One: that she used the word "restroom". I've found that after awhile, many if not most foreigners start using "toilet" even in English. In Japanese they often use "toilet" to refer to the room, and we tend to adopt this after awhile.
The other thing that told me she was a Japan newb was that she worried about her things. No one who has been here for more than a year worries about this.
Here is a (revised) Quora answer I wrote on this matter a while ago. (see the original here)
Question: What is an "Only in Japan" moment?
When I first arrived in Japan over a dozen years ago, I witnessed something that at the time made me scratch my head but has since been employed by me many times.
I was sitting in a public space with some of my new Japanese friends. A guy a few tables over got up and left. I noticed he left his wallet and mobile phone on the table and commented to my friends that he must have forgotten them. I was going to get up and grab them to take them to him before he got out of my sight, something that seems natural to me and that I had done many times in the States when witnessing someone forgetting something. In my thinking, it's the nice thing to do.
My friends informed me that he was leaving them on the table to mark his spot, so that no one would grab the table while he was gone*. I was shocked by this. “Doesn’t he worry that someone will take them?” I asked. They just laughed at me and said “This is Japan. People don’t take things left behind by others.”
In the years since I have learned to do the same and routinely leave my wallet, mobile, laptop, or other expensive things when I leave to go use the toilet, order food, just walk and stretch my legs with the intention of coming back, or any number of things. I never worry that these items will disappear while I'm gone. The thought doesn't even really occur to me anymore.
Yes, I know I know… Japan has given me a very bad habit should I try this back home in the US.
(A somewhat related note: I'm not sure how true it is, but I have been told more than once by Japanese people than the reason for the lack of street crime in Japan isn't that Japanese are inherently more honest, it's that the yakuza controls such things very closely, and if street crime does start to go up, they get involved and punish the culprits in their own way... yikes)
*: In Japan, unless it is very busy, people usually won’t sit at a table if someone else is sitting there. So each person usually gets the entire table to themselves.
Ask Me Japan
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Thank you for reading. See you next time!
 | David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time. More? |
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