Training In Japan

Yesterday, I talked about big things in small spaces and I forgot to mention a really fascinating example I encountered in my wanderings yesterday. In America, new car lots are large, acre-gobbling lots filled with multiple models and colors and option packages. Here in Japan, the lots are smaller and as you might expect, fewer cars. However, in the same footprint as 5 or 6 cars, they will put 15 to 24 cars. How do they jam that many cars into the same space? They put them on conveyor racks that they can move around and stack several vehicles high. Clever, I thought.

Today being Sunday and a beautiful (sort of) warm day, I decided to be a little adventurous and explore out a bit further. Yesterday, I said I might take the train and I did. I took the train from the Fussa (pronounced Foossa) station to Tachikawa. It is about a 20 minute train ride from here with about 7 stops in between. Tachikawa is a fairly big suburb of Tokyo. It was fairly cheap to ride the train, costing ¥320 or about 3 bucks for the round trip. It wasn’t too crowded, but I’m sure during the weekday commute, it is packed to bulging.

It is a bit humbling to ride the train to a strange place where you know nothing of the language and can’t read a word of anything except for the odd English phrase or word and you can’t put a lot of trust in that. Add to that the fact that as someone of obvious European extraction, you don’t exactly blend in here. I tower over most the local population and I’m only 5’11”. I’m not ever mistaken for a local. One of the things I learned long ago in my various travels abroad is that if you go as the ugly American, you will reap what you sow. People will be rude and much less helpful. I managed to get to Tachikawa and back without getting lost. It could have been different as I had absolutely no idea what train went where or on what track.

Smiling, trying to stammer out a few words in the language, and acting as respectful as possible will get you what you need, and when you get it, learn to say thank you in the language of wherever you happen to be. You’ll be amazed at how far people will go to help you out.

Once I returned, I decided to poke around in the grocery department of the Seiyu (Wal-Mart) store next to the Fussa Train station. Wal-Mart owns a about 42% of the Seiyu group and will soon own over 50%. Unlike an American grocery store, where beef , pork and chicken are the stars of the meat department with fish and seafood taking a supporting role, fish and seafood take up the vast majority of the meat space with the rest taking a bit part.

Cigarettes and liquor are fairly inexpensive. A pack of smokes will run you about 280 Yen and a bottle of liquor will cost from 1100 to 1800 Yen or about 10 to 17 dollars. Be prepared to pay 1000 yen or more for a six pack of the cheapest beer. Beer here is expensive. I don’t drink alcohol so it doesn’t matter to me, but the cost of beer over here is expensive. And really, beer is in a large way, the national drink of choice over here.  Figure about ¥110 per dollar

Another thing I noticed were little tiny color TV like devices on the shelves extolling different products. I suppose they’ll be blaring at us soon enough in the USA, if they aren’t already in some places.

VW

Comments

[SemperFi]

I'm enjoying your travelogue! Keep 'em comming....