I've recently travelled to Cambodia and Vietnam.
Besides me getting food poisoning and losing my appetite most of the trip...it made me feel grateful of my own country.
I live in Japan, where everything is orderly and clean. This past 17 years of living in this country, made me realize how I have gotten so used to this convenience and cleanness. So let me tell you how this country works.
First, we have convenience store all over the neighborhood. All of Japan, there are more than Fifty-thousands convenience stores, or conbini is how we call it, that are usually open 24 hours and sell anything you need: food, drink, toilet paper, underwear, magazine, medicine to sending out laundry. If you are living by yourself, you can basically live off of getting everything from convenience store. So you wake up in the morning, sleeping until very last moment and you realize you don't have food in your apartment. You can quickly stop by at the conbini in front of the train station and grab some bread and a milk togo. During the lunch break, you don't have time to go out and line up for the lunch special, you can quickly go to conbini and grab sandwich or set up meal with rice, meat and veggies togo. After work, you feel like you want to get some booze but don't feel like going to a bar alone? No problem, just stop by at conbini and grab booze and side dishes or even Sushi togo. Right before you step into a shower, you realized that the shampoo is out, you can walk two minutes away, there you go, you can get whole body products no problem. See how convenient with this conbini in our lives?
Second, how train comes ON TIME, SHARP. I think train system is advanced in a lot of countries, and on Goggle map you can check which line to take and where to transfer etc. However, in Japan train comes on time as the sign says on the board or on the app you have on your phone. So pretty much if you know the time you get to the station, you can plan out the exact time that you are arriving to wherever destination you are going to. You think I'm kidding? I usually take 8:41 train to work every day, after that it is 8:53. Within that time frame, if the train got delayed for more than 2 minutes, it will announce that train is delayed and they will have a small slip proving it so you can take it to work to show that it wasn't your fault for being late. I mean...it is almost an art for being able to operate this precisely everyday. But ironically, Japan is one of the countries with high number for suicide rate, and is one of the top reasons for trains to get delayed. It could be this preciseness in this country, that makes people wants to kill themselves? Maybe...?
Third, this country is god damn clean! Especially in Tokyo that new buildings are constantly built and renovated that have the cleanness maintained. Besides that though, still everything is clean in a city like Kyoto where old buildings are maintained. I still haven't figured out exactly why this country is so clean...I mean, we litter and the population of smoking is probably way higher than the States, so theres cigarettes buds everywhere...but I walk around and theres no where as clean as Japan than any other countries.
Fourth, we always have order in things. Like how elder people are respected in this country, we keep order with peace. We line up for things, theres always specific ways to do things everywhere, even in how we drink tea at a tea ceremony. I was at clinic today, waiting for my turn to come and made me think of what my foreign professor said about his experience of getting drivers license in Japan. He said that as a Gaijin (how we call foreigners) he didn't know where to line up and do what, but everyone there who are Japanese knew exactly where to go and what to do next. That made me think how Japanese people are very keen to what other people are doing, and are great at mimicing or following the crowd. We often refer ourselves as island people, hence it was convenience for us to maintain peace in this country that is surrounded by sea water, since theres no where to flea away. So we often read the situation and do the right thing in the environment, leading us to know what to do in the situation. Well, theres always a bad side to anything, and this mental state is the reason why Japan is still monogamous country that has hard time accepting foreigners for some people.
Well, I don't know if all these four points adds up to be the reason for how convenient it is to live in this country as being Japanese...but its hella it is.
