Arijana Belina Livić

I had friends living in Japan and working on a project. I took the opportunity to see Japan. The plan was to stay for two weeks, but I flew in during the lockdown and stayed for 5 weeks. The lockdown did not feel different there until my last week when there were few people on the streets. My friends lived in Yokohama. A small apartment of 37 m2 where everything was just tip-top. The living room where I slept could be closed overnight and function as a separate bedroom. I made several one-day trips to Tokyo. We spent a weekend in Kyoto. A few times we went to Kamakura on the coast, and to the surfing destination of Enoshima. I also went to Osaka. I had never been to such big cities before. Tokyo delighted me because it is a metropolis of wonderful and diverse architecture. Huge crowds. Diverse amenities. Dazzling lights at night. Opulent vibes. People are very kind. It is not mentioned much, but I noticed that almost one in four women I saw in the streets has a limp. Both men and women wear shoes up to two sizes too large. Many fancy places (restaurants, bars) are located on the higher floors of skyscrapers. All those luminous "billboards" on buildings are actually signs showing what is located on which floor. Everybody talks about Japanese toilets, they are really technologically beyond anything that can be seen in Europe, to the extent that in a beach toilet I could not figure out how to flush it. It was very embarrassing because there were several girls queuing in front of the door. It is interesting that their cherries bear no fruit, just flowers – the sakura. Countless trees have been planted on river banks and during the Sakura season, the petals fall into the river, which is very romantic. It is unusual that instead of leaving advertising flyers with information on their business, they leave fridge magnets in the mailbox or in the lobbies of buildings. There are very few "non-Japanese" and we as Europeans stuck out like a sore thumb. In those 5 weeks, apart from my group of 5 non-Japanese people, I saw only one other group of 7 people who did not have slanted eyes, despite the widely mentioned fact that Yokohama is the city with the largest number of foreigners. They drive very small cars, which look like toy cars. The parking lots in front of their houses are multi-storey. Everything is geared towards utilising space as much as possible. At one point, I experienced a minor earthquake. Everything in the apartment was “bound” so it wouldn’t crash down in that situation. I was most impressed by the calmness of the people and the feeling of security. I found it interesting that despite the huge population, there are cafés that can seat a small number of customers. These are tiny family restaurants lining entire streets. They brew their own beer. There is a sense of intimacy. They don't shout when they talk. Respect for other people is palpable. I'm not a fan of fish and sushi, I love meat, and I can say I never tasted bad meat in Japan, be it in a local eatery or in a famous restaurant. Everywhere is clean and tidy. The friend that I stayed with finds their personal hygiene wanting, though, but due to the lack of space, they are extremely tidy, which gives the impression of cleanliness. I had an amusing encounter in Yokohama. I was looking at a tree when an elderly man approached me and said in Japanese that it was not sakura (cherry blossom). I told him I knew it wasn’t. He then asked me where I came from. Croatia, I said, to which he immediately said: Luka Modrić! What was funny was that I spoke English and he spoke Japanese and we understood each other completely.