Category: Japan – Living

Are you feeling 100%? We think it can be difficult to stay healthy in Japan. In what ways is your lifestyle healthy or unhealthy?

Hmmn, is anyone anywhere ever feeling 100%?

I don’t think it’s very difficult to stay healthy in Japan, although I do worry about what might happen should I get really sick.

With respect to a healthy lifestyle, I’m certainly living more healthily here in Japan than I did in the States. Of course, I eat almost exclusively Japanese food, which may not be the same with other foreigners (certainly among foreign co-workers I notice a lot of McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken runs). Japanese have the longest average life-span in the world and certainly their diet contributes greatly to this longevity. I’m a vegetarian who eats fish (therefore not really a vegetarian but nevermind) and frankly I’ve never eaten as well or as healthily as I’m now eating in Japan.

While a relatively new thing, sports gyms are growing in popularity and unless you live in the sticks, they’re very accessible and reasonably priced. Biking can be a necessity, especially if you live in the suburbs, and this helps too. Hiking opportunities are a plenty. Frankly, if foreigners are complaining that it’s difficult to live healthy in Japan, they aren’t trying hard enough, or they need to get with the program and start loving Japanese food!

That said, there are many unhealthy aspects of living in Japan. For starters, the daily salaryman regimen of working long hours, getting sloshed after work, and getting the majority of their sleep on the commuter train is certainly unhealthy. Living in Tokyo, while not as dirty or polluted as some metropolises, can’t be very healthy in the long run. I think it’s easier to catch colds here. In the relentlessly hot and humid summers, many Japanese seem able to forgo air-conditioning, but not I and I doubt many other foreigners. So sleeping with the air-con on is a necessity, though I can’t imagine that’s very good for the body and over the long-term I worry about the consequences.

Fortunately I haven’t had to seek health care, and so I can’t directly comment on that aspect, but via anecdotal information I do worry about the standard of health care in this country should I (knock on wood) require it.

What`s the best thing you`ve done here, what are your best memories so far? (anything outside work – adventure, a great night out, joining a club etc..)

Well, I haven’t really done or experienced anything here yet that has knocked my socks off, but I think I would have to say that the time my wife and I went to Shiobara (in Tochigi prefecture) to spend the night and partake in the hotel’s onsen is probably my best memory so far (in 7 short months of living here).

The 1-night getaway came at just the right time, just after my mother-in-law and I had had a big argument, and so I really needed to get out of the house and spend time alone with my wife rather than with her and her family together. The trip afforded us to talk about a lot of things we hadn’t yet had the time to talk about.

It was also nice to drive up there, and use the car to explore the surrounding towns. Coming from car-culture America, there’s something very comforting about being behind the wheel of a car and in control of one’s own destiny, so to speak. And it was my first extended car trip in Japan, so I was proud of being able to drive along the expressway on the “wrong” side of the road.

There’s something to me very luxurious about padding around a ryokan or small Japanese hotel in a robe and slippers, to and from the communal onsen bath or dinner. Despite the other guests, I have this image that the entire hotel is mine, that it’s one big penthouse suite or something. And the bath, well what can one say…one of the true joys of Japan, an onsen bath.

One last thing about that trip to Shiobara. My wife and I are fairly certain that it was during this trip that our child-to-be was conceived. So yes, I think this trip to Shiobara is my best memory of Japan so far.

Recently there was a call in a local English newspaper for male foreigners living in Japan to share their experiences with the authors of an upcoming guide to living in Japan, to be written from a male perspective. In part because I thought it would make good blog fodder, I decided to participate. (As you can see if you’ve stopped by in the last two weeks, I’m in desperate need of some blog fodder. Actually, blog fodder time might be more accurate, as I seem to have none these last couple of weeks). So, the idea is that the authors will be asking via email one question per day for 30 days. Without further ado, here’s the first question, and my response:

What are the things that surprised you the most when you first came to Japan? What things do you wish you had known before coming?

Well, I had been to Japan twice before actually moving here, both as a tourist, although my second visit (last year) was for a month and was sort of a “dry run” at what living in Japan with my (at the time future) in-laws would be like. So I think there have been fewer surprises than there might have been otherwise.

That said, there were a few things that I was unprepared for or that surprised me.

First, the language. Frankly I was taken aback and how little my years of casual study of Japanese prepared me for the actuality of speaking the language with real live Japanese people! 🙂 This is the classic problem really that Japanese learners of English face, years of study but no natives to speak to, therefore they can’t speak one iota of the language. It was almost the same for me.

Now, one can survive quite comfortably in a city like Tokyo without ever learning the language, but if there is any personal inclination to stay here for a while, and do all the things that one does when actually living in a place, one feels the desire to make Japanese friends, discuss opinions and feelings, understand your neighbors, read the newspaper, etc., these are things that can’t be done with survival Japanese, or no Japanese.

Japan is not nearly as expensive as it’s made out to be, especially if one has moved here from an expensive American city, like I did having moved here from San Francisco. As a tourist, naturally the country is expensive. But in day to day living, if you’re a smart and disciplined shopper (or in my case, married to one who is), there’s no need to break the bank. Transportation is expensive (though most companies reimburse employees for commuting expenses), and so weekend getaways and exploring Japan can be prohibitively expensive. Eating out in Tokyo can be expensive, but there are plenty of places that are extremely reasonable or downright cheap.

Japan can be a fairly rigid country with respect to customs and traditions, and although this is changing, it is still very much of a conformist society where individuality is not looked upon very positively. I have found that people are very much “set in their ways”. While this in and of itself wasn’t surprising, my strong negative reactions to it have been surprising and something I wasn’t quite prepared for. Or rather, I thought I would adapt more easily to it than I have. I’m not sure there is anything I could have done beforehand to alleviate it.

Along these lines, I was surprised at the extent to which one stands out as a foreigner in this country, especially is one lives in the surburbs or away from the major cities. While seeing folks nearly fall off their bicycles as they turn around to stare at the foreigner in their midst is initially amusing, it grows tiring really fast. Recently another American moved into the neighborhood. Even before he had moved in, via neighborhood gossip passed on to my mother-in-law, I knew more about this guy than I had any right to know without having met him. I can only imagine what the entire neighborhood knows about me!