To use the physics sense, we found vacationing in Japan high friction. Yeah, it was totally different than anywhere we have been on n America or Western Europe. At times, it felt like we were looking at everything on the other side of a closed window, amazing yet inaccessible. This was ‘05 or earlier, and the lack of Roman lettering outside Kyoto was hard. Outrunning English has not been a problem elsewhere, but losing the ability to read was hard. We had a native set up our trains and hotels, and could not imagine trying to do it ourselves. Packaged tours suck, so that was never considered.
In the end, the sheer wonder lost to the effort of appreciating it. Which, of course, is a commentary on us not Japan. I suspect they encounter the same problems doing the reverse, possibly the same wonder and friction as well.
To add, we were amazed by the politeness and helpfulness of the people we met everywhere. We were obviously tourists trying to navigate and trying not to annoy.
I would agree that would have been the case years ago. Nowadays with the equivalent of babelfish on our phones, language barriers have come close to being almost non existent.
Totally agree with it - IMHO the main enabler being Google maps with public transit support. In both 2017 & 2019 we were able to get by with that + some rudimentary Japanese on some actually non-trivial trips sometimes.
Also, even when comming from Europe (Czech Republic) Japan always seamed much more convenient & more civilized than at home! :D Like, like everything is clean, there are vending mashines, convenience stores and public toilets everywhere + super public transport. EVen in reasonably remote/inaka places. :)
Was hoping that was the case, good to see. Seamless translation as part of my glasses would be great, as waving one’s phone about looks a little dorky. And I would have Arthur’s response to a babelfish I fear. The lack of subtlety in Roman lettering made pattern recognition easy, harder with complex symbology.
One thing that helps -- besides the Google translate app -- is to learn Katakana and Hiragana before you leave. There are only ~48 characters in each and they match each other 1:1 (think of Katakana as "printing" and Hiragana as "cursive"). Each character represents only one sound (unlike English) so it's easy to learn the symbol-to-sound mapping. Most signage and menus include one or the other and being able to sound out the phonemes dramatically increases one's feeling of being able to read. You can learn either from its Wikipedia page:
Kanji is a whole different deal: That's the writing system with tens of thousands of characters. It helps to learn the most common few of these, but it's completely unnecessary to learn more than that to have an enjoyable time as a tourist.
> Outrunning English has not been a problem elsewhere, but losing the ability to read was hard
Losing the ability to read is really a hard but also interesting experience. It really felt like losing one sense. While main tourist spots had romanization, more local places did not.
On the other hand, not being able to read made me more aware of my surroundings.
Like observing what other people did before doing something myself. Or having to stop for a minute before entering a store or ordering from a food stall to recognize what was sold there. I also remember being less distracted by ads and signs.
I went to Japan in recent years and it was frictionless. Plenty of English signs, more people than I was led to believe spoke at least rudimentary English, and Google translate worked in a pinch.
Aside from not being famous or beautiful people, we liked and sorta related to lost in translation. They were good trips, and I encourage anybody from n America to visit the war museums in Tokyo and especially Hiroshima. Everybody should do Hiroshima. All in the spirit of “never again”.
I think Kyoto and maybe one other city wasn’t bombed in ww ii. Let the old temples and statues survive.
I always refer only to numerals as Roman, the alphabet/writing system always as Latin
Btw your 2005 pre smartphone experience compared to nowadays is not relevant anymore with everyone having GPS maps and translator in hands even if no signage were changed, I sort of liked old times when you had to interact with locals, nowadays you can just stare at mobile and no need to talk to them at all.
> I sort of liked old times when you had to interact with locals, nowadays you can just stare at mobile
Disconnecting from home is something harder to do now.
Back when I travelled in the late 2000s, early 2010s, I'd usually just do a three minute phone call home to let them know I arrived well, and perhaps send an email every couple days with one or two photos from a cyber cafe, later with the laptop from the hotel wifi.
From the late 2010s onwards, with roaming packages, local sim cards wifi even on flight is harder to disconnect without turning off notifications.
One one hand it's quite cool to make a video call to family from the other side of the world, but it also means that suddenly you'll end up dealing with day to day home stuff from a trans pacific flight.
In the end, the sheer wonder lost to the effort of appreciating it. Which, of course, is a commentary on us not Japan. I suspect they encounter the same problems doing the reverse, possibly the same wonder and friction as well.
To add, we were amazed by the politeness and helpfulness of the people we met everywhere. We were obviously tourists trying to navigate and trying not to annoy.