Maša Lugonja Mohović

I first visited Japan at the end of the 1990s when I visited my sister and her then-boyfriend, who were graduate students there on a Japanese government scholarship. I experienced the first culture shock when, after our plane landed, we headed for the subway to downtown Tokyo. There yellow triangles on the platform marked the spots where the train’s doors would open. Behind those triangles were orderly queues of Japanese and some ‘gaijin’ (foreigner, non-Japanese; a word that would become familiar to me with very quickly over the next few days) who were calmly waiting for the train to arrive. Of course, I thought there was no chance that the train would stop with such precision and that the door would open right in front of the triangle. When the door opened, there was no jostling. First, there was an orderly wait for people to depart from the train. After that, everybody (including us) started entering. There was also a metro employee at the station who pushed us onto the train and made sure to fit as many of us as possible per area unit. We were on our way to Tokyo. Since we hadn't seen each other for almost a year, we had a lot to say to each other and were oblivious to how loud we were. At one point, I turned around and realized that our car was half empty, while those to either side of it were jam packed. It dawned on me that the Japanese were irritated by our noise, but were too polite to say anything, so they just moved to another car. That same day, we were invited for an evening out Japanese-style: nomihodai – going to a bar where you pay a fixed sum for unlimited drinks. That sounded interesting. We came to a bar at the top floor of a skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo. It was full of young Japanese people in suits who were already glassy-eyed. While there, the gaijin we were with revealed another insight into the Japanese. Work is very important to them, and socializing after work is almost mandatory. However, what I didn't know was that the Japanese have a much lower tolerance for alcohol than we do, so they don't need to drink much to get ‘plastered’. We saw the consequences upon leaving the bar. A fair number of those young Japanese business people, who had been very suave and elegant just an hour earlier, were now strewn along the pavement puking.
One of the most beautiful experiences was visiting the Kabuki-za Theatre in Tokyo. Given that kabuki is something typically Japanese and that the theatre was not a tourist attraction, we wanted to see the show and that segment of Japanese culture. We heard that the shows lasted for 4 hours and were performed in old Japanese, which even the Japanese find difficult to understand. But for foreigners there was a more acceptable option: a ticket for just a part of the show, some 20-30 minutes (adapted for tourists, and cheaper). As it happened, we bought tickets for the entire show and decided to stay until the end as we had already paid for the more expensive option. The show started in the early afternoon. The atmosphere was solemn, with the Japanese appearing in traditional attire. Audio guides with headphones were provided for all visitors at the entrance. For the Japanese, with a recording of the play translated into standard Japanese, and for us foreigners, the translation into English, but also stories about the history of kabuki, interesting facts about the actors, about how the plays were staged. As the show was long, there were several intermissions. To our surprise, during these breaks the Japanese would pull out their bento boxes with wonderful meals. There they were, wearing exquisite kimonos, taking out tablecloths and putting their bento boxes on them, producing chopsticks and digging in right there in the middle of the theatre. Four hours passed just like that. We left full of impressions. We learned a great deal, and enjoyed the show and the atmosphere of that theatre. Time just flew by.