Adjustment

Whenever somebody sits in an empty seat next to someone on the train, the person that was already sitting will do an adjustment of their position. I've categorized these adjustments into three categorific categories of categorification:

1. The long coat/dress adjustment - If you have a long coat, dress, or other garment that spills onto the next seat and somebody sits on top of it, you become restricted in movement. Some people will pull their clothing out from under the other person that sat on it. Others will think ahead of time and pull it out of the way as the new person is sitting down.

2. The dumbass adjustment - A lot of people don't sit properly to allow the maximum number of people in the sits. Part of their body will spill onto the next designated seat. When a new person sits, it'll feel particularly crowded on the side which the first person took up too much space. The original sitter will readjust to get a little farther away from the new sitter. Sometimes the dumbass adjustment has to be done because some dumbass sat in the wrong place, but the people that sat next to the dumbass tried to position themselves as best as they could given the situation. You'll see a row of people adjusting themselves as a new person sits down to make up for the one person that screwed things up.

3. The fake adjustment - Some people do a little wiggle or move forward or backward on their seat as or after a new person sits down next to them. The original sitter was already relatively positioned correctly and the adjustment doesn't change their position at all. This adjustment is the most puzzling. Why fake an adjustment when you don't have to? Is this some form of BS courtesy?

Photo

The citizens don't seem to have much photography skills. With the recent outbreak of cherry blossoms, a blooming of professional photographers cropped up at all the parks. A lot of old men and women carrying their big SLR cameras could be sighted everywhere. You'd think that with such great equipment, they must know how to use it. When I wanted my picture taken with the great white seas of flowers, I often had to ask random strangers to take a photo for me. I didn't expect the people taking pictures with cell phones to have any skill, but I figured at least somebody carrying a big camera might be able to take a decent picture of me. But I was wrong. One picture has a bunch of grass in half of it and another picture is an intense close-up. All the pictures failed to get a significant amount of cherry blossoms in them. I couldn't tell if they were horrible photographers or if they were trying to be artistic.
"Hai, chiizu! Daijobu desu ka?"

Knees

Many eateries have a small little shelf under the table or counter for customers to store their bags. Despite the usefulness of this feature, some of them have a design flaw. Some of them are too low and stick out too much. You often unexpectedly bang your knees against these shelves. Itai!

Heating 2

I felt like eating ice cream the other night and I stepped into Baskin Robbins for some overpriced goodness. It was so hot inside the store that my sweat glands started firing. Eating ice cream while you're sweating in the summer is expected, but eating ice cream while you're sweating in the winter is unneeded. I went outside the store and ate my ice cream in the night temperature hovering above freezing because I couldn't bear the heat inside. Doesn't heating the store and cooling the ice cream at the same time create a high energy bill? Maybe that explains the high prices for ice cream there.

Gomi 3

The other night I walked past a guy and I heard something drop on the ground. I looked over and saw that he had dropped a cigarette butt. About a second later, I heard the same sound and looked back. He had dropped two more butts. I suppose the Japanese enjoy the view of cigarette butts on the ground. It must be a kind of traditional action like the tea ceremony. I focused on the street for the rest of my walk and noticed many cigarette butts. Maybe littering leftover cigarettes is a form of art? Nippon is so advanced that I can't keep up with these radical ways of thought and expression.

Heating

Some of the stores love to crank up the heat during the winter. Most people are bundled up with winter clothing and they start sweating within two minutes of being inside the heated stores. At restaurants, some heating can be understood because people like to take off their jackets, scarves, hats, and gloves to relax during the meal. When you're shopping, you don't want to take anything off because there's nowhere to put it. I hope at least the employees are comfortable in the sweltering atmosphere of the stores.

The warmth can be felt on the trains too. Nobody takes off their jacket or other accessories when riding the train so it makes no sense to heat it. When the train gets packed, everybody's body heat combined with the heater turns the train into a mobile sauna. The overly heated seats can be especially annoying. Just because the Nihon-jins enjoy setting their butt temperature to 451 degrees Fahrenheit doesn't mean I do too.

Asahi Super Dry

I participated in a short conversation about dryers recently with someone. She said that the dryers at her residence actually manage to dry her laundry in 20 minutes. Amazing. In my experience, even 60 minutes wasn't enough to dry my laundry. I've never tested the theoretical drying point of my dryers because of the money required for such a task. Perhaps the Native Nihonjin Indians have spies stealing drying technology from America. I only hope that I live long enough to see the dream of the super dryer revolution come to life here someday.

Architecture

Some of the designs of these train stations just baffle me. Every once in a while, one falls asleep and has to get off at a random train station to catch a train heading the opposite direction. Sometimes at the smaller stations, it's impossible to get to the other side of the tracks without exiting the station and walking around to another exit. Of course, exiting the station and re-entering costs extra money. The oversleeper is forced to pay extra money or waste more time going in the wrong direction until he/she can find an accessible track going towards their desired direction. People always talk about how great the train system in Japan is, yet they never discuss how crappy some of the train stations are.

Banking 4

I stepped up to the ATM on Wednesday figuring that I would be safe from fees because it wasn't a weekend. Unsurprisingly, I was charged 105 yen because it was a holiday. If only the banks in America had extorted fees from their customers like the Japanese banks, maybe some of them wouldn't have gone bankrupt. Look at what happened to Washington Mutual for trying to avoid fees.