Category Archives: Travel

“Japan is becoming a society where harmony comes less from tradition now and more from shared intention.” Will it be fast enough to heal some serious social problems?

For us, visiting Japan was like the icing on the cake of life long travel. Having visited 60 countries including every province in Canada and state in the U.S., we found Japan to be downright amazing. Never colonized, it exhibits a harmonious culture that honours its roots and practices historical rituals. Japan has a lot to teach us about cherishing our collective past instead of making “we vs. them” judgments.

和 (wa). Pronounced wah, refers to harmony, peace, balance, and also the traditional Japanese spirit of social unity. 調和 (chōwa). Pronounced choh-wah means “harmonization” or “being in balance,” often used for things like colours, elements, societies, or ideas being in harmony. This is Japan’s social philosophy.

However, Japan is not without its unique social problems. Hikikomori is extreme social withdrawl of a person caused by pressure, shame, fear of failure and lack of an escape route. Expectations of social harmony can cause a Japanese (or any) person to feel totally out of place. Consequently a million or more Japanese have retreated to their bedroom to avoid all social interaction other than with family.

Japanese cultural values mean that these families do not confront or force a withdrawn family member to change. Instead, parents will continue to provide meals and accommodation for years hoping that the person will eventually change. Many of the so called hikikomori are now in their 40s or 50s! It’s known as Japan’s “8050” problem: parents in their 80s caring for children in their 50s who never reintegrated.

In chatting with some Tokyo residents, we were also told that many workers in Tokyo are extremely stressed out and not happy. They are constantly being asked for more and more by their employers. Work life balance ironically enough seems non-existent there. On the other hand, suicide deaths (mostly among middle-aged and older adults but also some youth) are trending downward due to strong prevention efforts. However, the numbers remain higher than in many other high-income nations. 

So will Japanese society be able to change fast enough to contain and resolve such social ills? Not likely according to some. Japan has a history of changing its culture incrementally. Rather than solve any deeply rooted social problem, it is likely to build support systems to help alleviate the pain.

We are just returning from a 19 day trip to Japan mostly by cruise ship where we visited the following places: Tokyo, Yokohama, Kamakura, Osaka, Kyoto, Shimizu, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Kochi and Enoshima. Yes it was quite a trip!

It was sometimes difficult to savour Japanese cultural differences because of the background noise on the ship, eg. ra-ra spirit, loud western music, trivia contests, people talking loudly etc.), we did enjoy observing the following:

• streets are clean beyond belief (if you ate a candy bar you had to bring the wrapper back to the ship as no public garbages pails anywhere)
• there were no visible homeless people on the streets
• the JR train and connected subway system is amazing, tap on tap off, go anywhere, no reservation needed
• one eat’s out of a bowl here eg, noodles, rice etc., there were few large plates and no knives in our rented apartment
• toilet seats are heated!
• prices seem less than in Canada eg. Bordeaux wine for $8 a bottle
• everyone waits for the green pedestrian signal, no one jaywalks here!
• fish is so plentiful, so fresh and so delicious!
• everyone is calm, no visible conflict or trouble
• we never saw any smoking or vaping anywhere
• low obesity rate, people are generally small and skinny
• Japanese dress well (blue jeans, sneakers and shorts were not really in)
• streets and parks very crowded during Sakura (cherry blossom time)
• fantastic infrastructure, motorways, sidewalks, pedestrian streets, public washrooms, parks and gardens

We saw hundreds of young people in beautiful school uniforms. Dozens of young couples happy and laughing. Purple, blue, green, blond hair, short skirts, faces whitened, white socks and black shoes. Beautiful young women being photographed by their family in lovely dresses in the cherry blossoms at Shinto shrines. Well dressed workers. Really cute kids with pageboy haircuts.

We loved it particularly when we got ashore and spent a few days in Kamakura where they have a huge Buddha and a lovely bamboo forest where they serve traditional matcha tea. Very peaceful.