Early Impressions of Japan

Well... just as the little prince crash landed on the Earth in the now famous story, I have arrived in the seemingly alien world of Japan what is often thought of as the land of contradictions and where today is tomorrow. Fortunately and unfortunately this is my second semester here at Kansai Gaidai, I say fortunate because I get to spend more time in Japan, but unfortunate because it makes writing a blog post about my early impressions of Japan rather difficult as they happened back in September of last year. However coming back after a brief respite in the states has allowed me to view some things with fresh eyes so here we go. While some people think of the adjectives small, little, tiny and so forth when describing Japan I now prefer space efficient, if that makes sense. Biking from one location to another I pass by many condo like houses cramped together and then when there is open space there is something useful like I don't know tons of tiny gardens. They seem to litter the landscape, but a good kind of litter not destroying the Earth kind of litter. Every square inch seems to have a purpose here, even vertically like the double decker trains where on the bottom level you are sitting beneath the train platform, with just as many people above you as there are around you. While some place can be empty at times like the campus is for now, it can quickly become overrun with people and the need for the amount of sidewalk space becomes clear, and on some crowded city sidewalks you will wonder why there is not even more space. So having come to Japan gone back home and returned only to continually notice the use of space and at time complete lack of space, sorry to not have a picture of this will get one up in a future blog, I thought I would just share my two cents on the subject.