Before the Spring Festival in the Year of the Dragon, I went to Japan with my wife and the tour group for a tour (six days and five nights). Although it was a short time, I had some emotional contact with Japan. In my spare time in the past few days, I will write it down and share it with you. The insights in it, or there are deviations, I hope you will not hesitate to correct them.
1. Déjà vu in a foreign country.
When you enter Japan, if you don't talk to people, you will often feel a sense of déjà vu when you look at the buildings on the streets, the people walking, and the kanji on the shop signs.
Compared to Europe and the United States, the biggest advantage of traveling in Japan is that the customs are not far from the life we are familiar with. For example, although there are special features such as sushi and washoku, many restaurants often serve similar foods to domestic food, such as vegetables, rice, ramen, beef, and seafood. It's just that some foods, ingredients and methods are similar to those in China, but the names are different. For example, the more famous "tempura" in Japan is found to be the deep-fried eggplant and deep-fried lotus root slices that have been eaten in China.
Because of the heavy use of kanji in Japan, walking around the streets of Japan often tells you where you're going without having to ask for directions just by relying on the maps and written directions. At Sensoji Temple in Tokyo, there is a stone monument that is even engraved with ancient Chinese, which is no different from the stone monuments in Japan.
But Japan, after all, is a foreign country for us. When you see the shop signs interspersed with Japanese flat business card kana translated from Chinese, especially when you talk to passers-by or clerks, you realize that you are indeed in Japan, and everything you are familiar with is completely different from the buildings, people, etc. in front of you.
For example, in those Chinese characters, "big husband" only expresses "no problem" and "no problem". What about "hand paper"? It is not what we mean by handpaper, but "letters". And "temple" is an honorific title for men. Therefore, some hot spring places use "temple" to represent men and "hime" to represent women. The word "case" that is often seen in tourist places means "guide" and "accompanying visit".
Staying in Japan a little longer, we will find that Japan is similar to us in some places and more different places. For example, in Japan, you don't just have to drive on the left, but you also have to keep left when walking. Especially when riding the escalator, if you habitually stand on the right, it will inevitably obstruct the passage of people behind you. For another example, in Tokyo, Japan, although the subway lines extend in all directions, if you take the subway to buy a ticket, you can often only buy it in sections, and you can't buy it from the starting point to the end at one time, because the subway of different lines is operated by different companies, and the line stations operated by one company cannot appear on the lines operated by other companies.
To be continued).