From love hotels in summer to the history of fireworks, these juicy bits of information amaze even Japanese people.
surprising
If you’ve never seen how far cats stray from home at night, then prepare to be just as shocked.
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Convenience stories in Asia are known all over the world for actually living up to their name. Whether you need an emergency swimsuit, want to grab pretty much any drink ever made, or just have a hankering for some Evangelion donuts, a nearby conbini will suit your needs.
But sometimes there are items available in conbini that don’t seem to make any sense… and yet people still buy them. Japanese netizens shared their most confusing yet surprisingly useful convenience store finds online, and we have them here for you. Would you ever admit to buying some of these?
Foreign cultures are always going to have things that surprise outsiders. Roasted shellfish snacks may be perfectly normal to Japanese people but not quite so appetizing to us, whereas kids dressing up on graduation day is endearing to us but downright terrifying to Japanese people.
The Japanese website CuRAZY recently compiled a list of 12 extremely popular tweets that revealed some sort of “surprising information.” Far more surprising than the tweets themselves though is the fact that so many Japanese people actually found the information surprising in the first place.
Last summer, I was riding the subway with some friends from home who were visiting me here in Nagoya, Japan. Suddenly, my friend pointed at a sticker on the window behind us. “What’s that?” he asked, staring wide-eyed at the image of a smiling cartoon golden dragon wearing a train conductor’s uniform. “That’s the mascot of the Nagoya Transportation Bureau,” I replied, happy to be imparting local knowledge. “Oh,” he said. “And why does the Transportation Bureau need a mascot?”
You see, it’s the little things that can be most surprising about a culture that’s not your own. Today, we bring you a list of 10 quirky things that you probably didn’t know – or may not have realised – about everyday life in Japan.
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