New Video | 12 Things NOT To Do in Japan

Awesome video, thanks for all the info. Hey Chris on top of everything you mentioned. Are there any other "rules" to follow when in comes to ....for example shoot video or record video in Japan. I know the usual .."No women bathroom and dressing rooms" but any other thing that you can suggest?...I'll be in Tokyo and Osaka with a few friends by the end of Golden Week and I'm planning to get some footage.

I didn't think about eating or drinking whilst walking in Japan but I knew there are signs and advice online about not doing it at Nakamise Shopping Street in Tokyo. So we were careful to eat our matcha ice cream cones off to the side like good tourists. I suppose even in the UK its not something I see people doing very often. I did walk and eat once with a soft sponge like cake and almost choked whilst going up stairs. Definitely learnt that lesson and I guess so have most of Japan!

Yeah I don’t know what happened there!

Abroad in Japan

We asked our guide about the lack of trash bins when we were in Japan this spring. He seemed to think it had something to do with an incident in a subway a few years back, where someone had hidden a bomb in a trash bin? Said it made everyone so wary of trash bins that they just got rid of a lot of them afterwards.

You should make a video about just how different the different regions can be.

I agree with above when it comes to Osaka. While there, people talked on phones on the train, kissed on the train, talked on the train with each other so loudly I couldn't hear stop announcements, littered everywhere, and completely ignored pedestrian lights.

anyone notice the camera glitching out with the door in the background? at 7:30

the business card thing reminds me of american psycho

I found during my trip last year that the traffic rules of law and order can waver a bit depending on which city you're in. I visited Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka and while the former two were very orderly with people sticking to their side of the sidewalk and obeying the traffic signals and signs to the letter, Osaka was slightly more freewheeling in some of its more frequented wards like Shinsaibashi and along the Ebisu river. I saw people jump red lights and ignore signs that prohibited bicycling on certain sidewalks by blazing down them full speed towards the flow of pedestrian traffic. The crown jewel of traffic disobedience I witness was a truck trying to cut through what was obviously a pedestrian shopping street. I don't know if those folks were true Japanese locals or maybe foreigners from the mainland or tourists or what but people in Osaka are wild.

MCBiohazard

Tipping in general is a pretty weird concept if you think about it (even if it is almost compulsory in places like the US so the staff can make a decent living), I'm kind of glad it's not a thing in Japan. Would you say it's a huge faux pas for a foreigner to use the wrong honorific in informal conversation? e.g. using -sama instead of -san, or -san instead of -chan?