Random Japan

10 things Japan gets awesomely right

• Philip Kendall 16 hours ago

At the end of our recent article listing the 10 things that we think Japan gets horribly wrong, we assured you that we’d be back soon to focus on some of the positives and introduce the things that we really, truly love about living in Japan. True to our word, we sat down and decided on what we as (mostly) foreigners most love about this great little collection of islands, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.

Although Japan is not without its faults, it is nevertheless an incredibly efficient and easy-to-live-in country, and we’ve discovered that there are numerous things that the Japanese get not just right, but awesomely right.

stats

• ¥500 millionTop prize in the year-end Jumbo Takarakuji lottery—a ¥100 million increase from 2012
• 810,000Number of Japanese people who suffer from alcoholism, according to health ministry estimates
• 780Number of times between July and September that the Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets in response to “feared intrusions by Chinese planes into Japanese airspace,” according to the defense ministry

YUCK!

• Researchers at Kochi University have found that an increasing number of people are experiencing allergic reactions to mites lurking inokonomiyaki pancake mix.
• A Saitama man rammed a delivery truck into a neighbor’s house, then attacked the 84-year-old resident with a saw before returning to his apartment and trying to hang himself from the balcony.
• Just before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided not to visit Yasukuni Shrine for an autumn festival last month, a poll found that 47.8 percent of Japanese voters would have approved of such a visit.
• Headline of the Week: “Radiation Exposure Study Finds No Abnormality in Fukushima Bull Testis” (via Mainichi Japan)

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