This is the result of a culture of anxiety in which saving face is so important. There is so much pressure to conform, to not do anything to disturb other people, and to keep up appearances, that this is not terribly surprising . . . very sad, though. It’s a bit like
hikikomori (students who have so much anxiety about attending school that they shut themselves up at home and never go out), but in a less extreme form.
Yamamaya wrote: From what I understand Japanese bathrooms are much cleaner
I’ve lived in two different parts of Japan and traveled in others, and I would say this is generally true. Sure, you can point to the fact there are some toilets set in the floor, but you could also point out typically dirty restrooms in America, like the ones at gas stations. And just because a toilet is set in the floor does not necessarily mean it isn’t clean, BTW. Overall, Japanese ones are cleaner. Japanese
anything is cleaner, really. Restaurants. Toilets. Used goods.
Wintyre Rose wrote:Uh...not where I lived, they weren't. o.0 Most of them were cleaned with water ONLY - and a very large percentage of the toilets were porcelain trenches in the ground. Throne style seating was rare in public places, even schools. Now, I lived in a little rural farming community surrounded by mountains
Keep in mind that these are students at major Japanese universities like the University of Tokyo. None of them are studying in any extremely rural area.
ShiroiHikari wrote:That's funny. I was under the impression that Japanese in general were germaphobes. I mean, they FREAKED about the pig flu, and they make people wear masks when they have colds. Or maybe that's only in the big cities.
Given how closely everyone is crowded together in Tokyo, I think it’s not all that unreasonable to freak out about something like that. Just imagine constantly passing through huge swarms of people every time you go anywhere farther than walking distance.
The Japanese are a strange mix of the ultra-modern and the . . . not. There are still many old-fashioned habits that persist in Japan. They wash their hands, often without soap, almost always with only cold water (only Hokkaido in the north has restroom taps with hot and cold water, I’ve heard). They will clean floors on their hands and knees with a wet rag sometimes, or at most with a swiffer (that’s because nothing high-tech is needed to clean the flooring in Japanese housing, unlike carpet). They measure rooms by how many tatami mats would fit in the room, whether or not it has tatami flooring, and most apartments do have one tatami room. Their houses usually do not have centralized heating and air conditioning. Most of them don’t have dryers, so they hang their clothes up outside to dry.
Everyone does this. During the rainy season, they hang up their clothes inside to dry.
Wintyre Rose wrote:But I've also heard that masks have another function besides not spreading germs...I can't remember exactly what it was, now. Something about keeping your mouth and nose area moist? I could be wrong, though, it's been a while, and I don't know that I ever understood all the reasoning behind it to begin with.
I’ve heard that after fifteen minutes you’re breathing the same germ-infested air as everyone else. But aside from those times when a sickness is going around that everyone is afraid of catching (e.g. H1N1 virus), the main reason the Japanese wear masks is that when you have a cold, you wear a mask to prevent everyone around you from getting what you have. (I had to do this once, too, when I went to work while ill.) When people catch a cold, they will wear a mask; if you are wearing a mask, people will look at you and wonder whether you are ill. This is because so much of Japanese culture is about not inconveniencing your neighbor.
Hm, this post makes it sound as if I have a negative view of Japanese culture, but that is totally not the case. While I realize that it has flaws and problems, just like every culture, I absolutely love Japan and Japanese culture.
@Wintyre Rose: That's cool that you were able to live in Japan for a while. Where were you in Japan? Were you studying Japanese? Teaching English? If it was as rural as what you describe, it must have been one of those places where even numbers are written in kanji more often than not and nobody speaks Japanese. Is that an accurate description of what you experienced?
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But I've also heard that masks have another function besides not spreading germs...I can't remember exactly what it was, now. Something about keeping your mouth and nose area moist? I could be wrong, though, it's been a while, and I don't know that I ever understood all the reasoning behind it to begin with. lol. Especially if it was explained to me in Japanese...