My First List of Things About Japan that Confuse Me

Decided not to go to STS9 tomorrow, cause it was gonna be too much of a headache and was gonna cost me quite a lot. Which is one aspect of life in Japan that makes absolutely no sense to me. Traveling within Japan costs A LOT, regardless of how you do the traveling. Shinkansen (bullet trains) are really fast and convenient, but that also makes them super expensive. To give you an idea, a one-way ride from Niigata City to Tokyo, which takes around 2 hours, costs over $100*. The same one-way bus ride takes 5 hours and costs around $50. Surprisingly, driving can be MORE expensive, cause you'll pay about $100 dollars in highway tolls, and you've got to pay for gas/a place to park when you get there. It confuses me why Japan would make it so expensive and difficult to travel around the country. Wouldn't you want people to be able to travel easily, so they'd travel more (and spend more money...)? Many JETs have told me it's actually cheaper to travel to Seoul, Korea for a weekend than to go to Tokyo -- and Seoul requires a flight!!!

*No worries for those of you who want to visit. As a foreigner, you can get a JR rail pass before you come, and ride almost all the shinkansen for a flat (pretty cheap) rate. So COME VISIT ME :-)

Which brings me to another mind-boggling aspect of Japanese life. In Japan, ATMs are not always open. In fact, they all close every day around 7 PM, and the ones that DO stay open (which are usually in convenience stores) charge you for using them after hours and charge you if the ATM is not for your bank, which they're usually not. As if it couldn't get any more retarded, ATMs are often closed on holidays. WHAT? Is there a tiny Japanese man inside the machine who requires the day off? Now, I understand not leaving the bank open, but the ATM? Again, wouldn't it make sense to leave it open 24 hours, as this would encourage people to spend hard cash (always a good thing)? I feel sorry for the poor salaryman who doesn't get off work till 8 and can't get hundreds of dollars out to spend at his favorite hostess club. Cause you know, like most places in Japan, his favorite hostess club doesn't take plastic.

Lastly, another aspect of Japanese existence that I fail to understand is the practice that some stores have of playing the exact same annoying song OVER AND OVER AND OVER again literally all day. Two stores in particular are especially bad about this: Uoroku grocery store and K's Denki electronics store. Kristin, you think the 20-song Old Navy soundtrack is bad? Try listening to the EXACT SAME annoyingly upbeat Japanese song featuring children's voices all day. I don't know how the workers do it. But I now have a theory about what causes the ruthless killings that occur here every once in a while. Those songs would drive anyone to a murderous rage...

Okay, done questioning things I will never understand. Hannah OUT.