Since there were so many small but remarkable things we noticed when we were travelling through Japan, we decided to write a separate text about it. One of the first things we noticed was that a lot of thinks produce sound. For example the traffic lights: instead of the ticking noise they make in some European countries, they play complete music tunes when the light turns green. We also came across a public toilet that had the possibility to play a sound like if you are flushing the toilet. It sounded very unrealistic and we couldn't think why and when people would use it... Talking about toilets: the Japanese have the most advanced toilets of the world: they almost all - including the public ones - have heated seats (great!), most have a built-in, warm bidet and some even have a blowdryer to dry your butts. And not to forget the one toilet we had with a remote control!

People in Japan are very polite and it's hard for them to say no. When we asked for directions it sometimes was obvious that they didn't have a clue, but they kept looking at our map and pointing at different points or asking other people for help. Making mistakes is also difficult for Japanese; this unfortunately makes them shy to speak English. We once had a waiter who didn't speak a word, but wrote complete sentences on a piece of paper. By the way, when you leave the restaurant, most waiters also accompany you to the street and make multiple bows and say "Domo arrigato gozaimas" (Thank you very much) a few times. And in some restaurants all the personnel says "Thank you" all simultaneaously together when you leave.

Also in the sometimes very crowded subway people stay as polite as possible; they really try hard not to touch someone else, they don't talk loud and the certainly do not use their mobile phone, although abolutely everyone owns at least one and is constantly playing with it. The Japanese use it to send SMS or browse webpages, but they do not disturb others by calling. One other thing that everybody has is an umbrella. On the days when we had rain really everybody used one. Bicycles have special holders for it (as well as built-in handwarmers), all shop entrances and restaurants had facilities to store your umbrella and some even had the possibility to lock it. Hotels let you use umbrellas for free, trusting you that you will return it.

One last example of this very advanced civilisation is their garbage segmentation system. We already thought the Germans were very advanced (and sometimes madmaking when we wanted to return our bottles to the wrong supermarket, but that's a different story ;), but the Japanese beat them. They have no less then five different boxes: 1. Everything that can be burnt, 2. PET bottles, 3. Aluminium cans, 4. Plastic and 5. rest. The funny thing is that the Japanese like to pack everything in we don't know how many layers, and by that they automatically create a lot of garbage to sort out...

All these, and more, peculiar and funny habits make Japan a very interesting country. And even though the language was sometimes a problem (you get something else on your dinner plate than you thought you ordered, or you are not allowed to book a room when you don't speak Japanese), it was mostly a fun challenge to get what we wanted.