- money tray
When making a purchase or other money transaction, the cashier hands you a small tray that you put your money in. He takes the money, puts the change in the tray, and hands it back to you. Very simple, but surprisingly helpful in preventing annoyances like dropping coins.
- prices rounded to the nearest yen
Almost every price was something like 350 yen, 400 yen, 390 yen, etc. You'd rarely have something cost like 392 yen and get 1 yen pieces back (the few 1 yen pieces we got were highly annoying). In other words, sales tax was already included in every price, which made it easy to figure out whether you had enough money to get something.
- no tipping
Service is included in the price. According to the culture, they would chase you down if you attempted to tip, and so it would be nice to have the option of rewarding exceptional service - but it was nice not to be obligated to give a tip for mediocre or poor service.
- heated seats - on the toilet, in the subway
It was kinda chilly when we were there, and so it was quite comfy and almost sleep-inducing to sit on a heated throne. Although, you'd have to poke yourself not to fall asleep on the toilet.
- environmental emphasis
Japan is one of the most environmentally-conscious nations in the world, and so there were plenty of recycle bins and little energy-saving gadgets and practices. Interestingly enough, the streets were also spic-and-span clean... and yet there were almost no public trash cans around.
- anti-fogging mirrors
In our bathroom, they applied some sort of non-fogging material to the mirror so that after a shower, there was a portion that was not fogged up:
- ordering food from a) plastic models and b) vending machines
Plastic models made it easy to survive food-wise without reading or speaking any Japanese. As for the latter item, we went to one restaurant that had no cashiers and 2 cooks in the back room. The cashier was a vending machine with pictures of the various menu items, like katsu-don, katsu-curry, etc. You'd select your item, pay your money into the machine, and it would give you your change and a receipt. The cook would get the order and bring it out to you. Very efficient. (pic by Mike)
- rickshaws
I think this will become Esther's preferred method of transportation:
Things that the US has that Japan should adopt
Not much here... but two items that I found I took for granted in the States:
- no smoking indoors (at least in California) - although most of the Tokyo citizens seemed pretty fit due to the amount of walking one does in an urban environment, the omnipresent cigarettes probably cancelled out the health benefits of all the walking
- no 100/500 coins
The 100 and 500 yen coins (~$1 and $5 respectively) were annoying because they had significant buying power, but were more difficult to carry around. I like the US $1 and $5 bill.
A few other random Japan pics that I didn't get into my last post:
We walked into a home department store with "home displays" (a la Ikea), and noted this display for a "Solo/Solo" setup - the ideal home for the couple "that needs space from each other." Wha? Apparently the husband and wife have separate beds in separate rooms, with the common area being the bathroom. This is the "dream house" setup for the urban couple where the husband gets back late from work and doesn't want to wake up his wife.
Vending machines - we attempted to find some with stuff like self-heating bowls of noodles that would start cooking once you opened them, but alas, we could just find machines with items like corn soup (pic by Mike):
Staircase (pic by Mike):
Meiji Shrine panoramic (pic by Andy)
