During any given TV show about Japan at some point the presenter will invariably become oh so shocked and embarrassed when after going to the loo he accidentally pressed one of the buttons on the side. He will sheepishly record the water spraying across via a gorilla camera that just happens to be within spitting distance of a toilet.

Watching this stereotype over and over, gave me a deep fear of those buttons and the knowledge that I should never EVER touch them. As soon as I came to Japan I realised that it is very easy to flush and that the makers of those programmes must have gone to great lengths to get their money shot.

It has only been in the last few months that I have actually felt confident enough to investigate that control pad of buttons. An automatically rising seat in KFC was the closest I’d got to space age toilet tech until recently. Now I have given them a go, I realise that they are not as scary as they might seem.

The set of buttons that you may see to your right when you use a public toilet in Japan generally control a bidet along with an air freshener and occasionally an embarrassing noise cover upper.

Here is a useful bilingual guide to the control panel.

You will notice that there is a gauge marked water pressure there. A word of warning, this is usually set rather high by default. Please turn it down before you decide to save a few toilet roll sheets by turning the spray on.

I didn’t and felt quite violated.

In Japan, in the foreign community there seems to be some kind of argument at the words gaikokujin and gaijin are racist. In not sure that I agree with this stance, these word simply mean foreigner. How else can you describe someone not from your own country? Seems fairly safe to me. BUT, I have noticed that there seems to be a very us and them attitude in the way Japanese people express themselves that gets more and more disconcerting the more I hear it.

“Foreigners are loud”, “Foreigners drink too much”, “Foreigners smell bad”, “Foreigners can’t queue properly”(!), “Foreigners are taking our jobs and our women”. These are things that I think people say no matter where they are from, not unique Japanese complaints (except for that thing about queuing). People are scared of differences and just assume that because they saw one person who is different do something once, they are all the same. I don’t condone such views but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

No, my issue is that your average nice Japanese person (not talking about nationalists here) seems to think there are 2 places in the world, Japan and Aboard. I have had people say to me things like “What do foreigners do?” or “How would a foreigner eat this?, “What is popular with foreigners?”. In my internal monologue I think, “How am I supposed to know?”. The only place I feel qualified to talk about is England, that is the only other place I have lived. How I supposed to know what all foreigners do? Sure, I’ve seen some stuff about Brazil on TV but Aboard is a big place!

Another occasion, a friend’s girlfriend started speaking Japanese with a silly accent and saying “This is Japanese like a foreigner would say it”. This stuck me as odd and I think my friend was trying his best to ignore her. It is odd because she was speaking Japanese like someone whose first language was English reading romaji badly. Not like a ‘foreigner’. I’m sure we have all put on accents to sound like an Italian, an Indian or a Scouser or whatever but I find that English people name the vague area that the person being mimicked is from. Go one, try to speak English ‘like a foreigner’, you may be able to come up with something but it would not be based on anything tangible.

I have tried to subvert the Japanese usage of the word foreigner but it often falls on deaf ears. I have been with Japanese people in a bar who have said “There are loads of foreigners here”, I have replied with, “Yes, there are a lot of Japanese people here, aren’t there”. After receiving confused looks I explain that as an Englishman they are the foreigners to me and that I am living Abroad. I think that people don’t see were I am coming from because of my poor Japanese skills though. I managed to explain it to my Japanese teacher once but that was with the aid of an iPad and some diagrams.

Gaijin, meanwhile has become one of those words that foreigners say when they are speaking English. Unlike some others like genki, mendoukusai and shouganai there is already a perfectly acceptable English word in our lexicon. Why say gaijin when we can simply say foreigner?

Well, once I was in Hub, a pub which is basically where people go to pick up girls, and a woman in my group of people came back from the toilet exasperated. “I hate gaijin!”, she said in English, matter of factly. As she was an American and having drinks with people from a plethora of different countries, I challenged her on this. I explained that she had basically just stormed in and said that she hated me and most people around the table.

“Oh, no”, she said, “I didn’t mean you. These two guys were trying to chat me up”. She then pointed to 2 fat blading white guys.

So to her Gaijin means “fat sleazy old white men”.

Perhaps it is racist after all.

It’s amazing that even after 5 years of living here culture shock can still sneak up on you. I did think that I had got used to things but then again, I’ve never worked in a tall building before.

Since I began working on the 11th floor I have noticed something rather disturbing about Japanese lift etiquette.  People are rather obsessed with the door open button. What I was used to back in the UK was standing at the back of the lift and when I got to my floor I would wait for people to file out and then exit myself. Or I would say excuse me and make my way out. The doors of any lift I entered would generally allow the time for this and there was not a problem to be had.

Here though is a different story. Who ever is nearest the buttons will generally hold the open door button and wait for me to leave. This is all well and good but generally I’m waiting behind them, waiting for them to walk out the door. Often our eyes would meet and I would eventually walk out apologising and feeling a bit weird. Now I have decided not to budge and wait for them to leave.

When in Rome do as I do.

I have good reason for this obstinance, generally the person holding the door open will be directly in my path meaning I would have to maneuver about skillfully to get past them, rather than just following them out. Most ridiculously is the situation that occurs when the person at the buttons assumes you want to get off at the same floor as them. They waste time staring at you for a while before you have to let them know they this ain’t my stop.

The worst thing about it all though is that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED TO PRESS THAT BUTTON! In general a lift gives you enough time for everyone to leave it. Sure you could say that they are trying to be polite by holding the doors open for you but if that is the case why doesn’t anyone open normal door for people here? The only reason you should ever need to press that open door button is to let someone onto the lift who didn’t quite get there on time.

Japan, stop delaying my lift by holding the doors open for people who do not wish to get off!

You know when you go on holiday to some exotic clime and you think, “Oh I’ll buy a little something for the office from here. You know, just to be nice.” You do this and everyone in your office appreciates the kind gesture. What happens is Japan is, “Oh, I better not forget to buy something for the office or they will regard me as scum.”

Yes, in Japan buying a little something for the office is basically expected of you. You not only have to buy them when you go on a big holiday but also if you go on a weekend trip somewhere. I dunno about you but when I worked in an office I definitely did not expect random snacks every time someone went on a weekend trip to Margate.

These little gifts, known in Japanese as omiyage, can be just about any small foodstuff. Generally sweets, chocolates, cakes or jelly but can also include stuff like sake and cheese. Omiyage is what I blame for there being no Japanese version of Mars Celebrations, but that is another story.

Omiyage is also another example of not being able to trust anything your Japanese-English dictionary says. The usual translation for omiyage is generally souvenir. Don’t trust that definition for a second. The always useful Dictionary.com defines souvenir as:

“A usually small and relatively inexpensive article given, kept, or purchased as a reminder of a place visited, an occasion,etc.;memento.”

Sure, omiyage is generally small but souvenirs are supposed to be a reminder of a place visited. Many times the place that you have just visited may hold no special meaning for the person receiving the omiyage or, at least, none that you are aware of. This is it just something that you must give to co-workers/family/friends, simply because that is what people do.

The best meaning for omiyage I can think up is:

 ”A small gift (usually food) that you must give people after you have been on a trip, otherwise they will think you are rude.”

Omiyage is so ubiquitous that shops dedicated to the selling of it are at just about any location of vague interest. Anywhere even just a little bit touristy has these things all over the place. Worse is that in the many shinkansen stations and airports dotted around Japan there are now omiyage shops which specialise in goods from other regions. So, say a couple who live in Tokyo visit Kyoto for a weekend, they no longer have to bother with the difficult process of thinking of others while there. They can just buy some random stuff from Kyoto at Tokyo train station when they return. Even madder there are now companies that have “Omiyage catalogues” which deliver this stuff to your door. So you don’t even have to take the time to go to a shop.

To me omiyage seems to be a thing that people are expected to do rather than stuff given out of the goodness of their heart, which is kind of sad. But perhaps this culture of gift giving has lead to the BEST THING EVER MADE™.

I recently went on a trip to Yamanashi, the prefecture where Mount Fuji is. We went for a drive up to the base of the mountain and there I found something incredible, Mount Fuji shaped melon bread. Anyone who knows me will be aware that I think freshly made, bakery melon bread is the greatest of all Japanese food. Shaping it in such a cool Japanese way just perfects it. Not only that it was, hand on heart, perhaps the greatest melon bread I have ever tasted. Having sampled it for myself I realised that I had to share its greatness with others. So, I am telling you about it dear readers and I also bought a couple to share with my house-mates.

THAT was done out of the goodness of my heart, as they are British folk no omyiage is expected but this find is something that I just had to give them a chance to try.

When I still worked at an elementary school, the kitchen staff decided to have a British cuisine themed school lunch one day. This was very nice and flattering and all but despite asking me for food suggestions it was obvious that the menu had been designed by someone who had never been within 500 miles of the UK. So that day, in spring 2012, we ate something similar to shepherd’s pie, vegetable soup, cheese bread, an apple and tea jelly.

Having tea jelly was certainly an experience but what stuck out most for me that day was something written on the Paku Paku Dayori. I noticed that they had written the old proverb, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” on the sheet. It was a delight to see this translated in Japanese to “１日１個のりんごを食べるとお医者さんがいらない”  which kinda means “1 day, eat 1 apple and you don’t need a doctor”.

This led me to wonder about other proverbs said by Japanese people which might be similar to the ones we use in English.

It turns out there are quite a few.

ローマは一日にしてならず
Roma wa ichinichi ni shite narasu
Rome wasn’t built in a day.

This one is literally exactly the same.

一石二鳥
Iiseki nichou
1 stone, 2 birds.

Same meaning as “Killing two birds with one stone”, only this time maybe the birds haven’t been killed, only slightly maimed.

猫に小判
Neko ni koban
Coins to a cat.

Have you ever given money to your cats? Did they know what to do with them? Nope… This one means the same as “Pearls before swine”.

手前味噌
Temae miso
The miso soup in front of you.

It’s annoying if a person goes on and on about how great their home-made miso soup tastes. The same as “Singing one’s own praises”

There are loads of proverbs that aren’t in English though

馬の耳に念仏
Uma no mini ni nenbutsu
A buddhist prayer into a horse’s ear.

There is no point saying prayers to a horse because he won’t understand what you are talking about. This one basically refers to a person who shows no sign at all of listening to what someone is telling them. It is also related to my favourite Japanese idiom, “Bajitoufu“. Which basically means in one ear and out the other.

However my favourite proverb is:

猿も木から落ちる
Saru mo ki kara ochiru
Monkeys also fall from trees.

This is basically saying that even experts can muck things up too. I have yet to find an opportunity to use this in conversation but when that day comes I will be a very happy man indeed.