A few thoughts of japan, it's culture, and tips for foreigners.

As said on numerous occasions by Ryan Carter, a Castlegar native teaching english over here in yokohama, japan exhibits a strange dichotomy; its the jetsons meets the flinstones.

Tokyo is arguably one of the most advanced and most high tech cities in the world; everyone, and i do mean EVERYone, owns and uses cell phones, computers, gizmos and gadgets. Despite this, there are virtually no services catering to foreigners. you cannot use north american debit cards in japanese atms. in fact andrew and i only found one bank - citibank- that can read our cards and dispense money. you CANNOT use credit cards anywhere, save the odd tourist shop, or perhaps department store. no restaurants really take credit cards, no stores, nobody!! I used my visa once, at asakusa, a tourist trap. Tokyo is truly a cash based society. I have heard that locals will withdraw the money they need for the month and keep it in their wallets. this means almost every person you see (old ladies, young boys) is probably LOADED! and yet there is no theft. noone guards their wallet protectively. no money belts needed. if you lose your wallet full of yen, it will surely turn up at the lost and found somewhere. they may even hand deliver it!

The View image">subway is a nightmare to the unfamiliar. the maps are chaos and colourful lines criss cross in every direction. there are tokyo metro, japan rail lines, local lines, municipal lines, private lines. at the busier stations the subways descend into the bowels of the earth, and you must climb staircase after staircase to see sunlight. i get the impression that the surface is actually many stories above ground. there seem to be so many things underground here. at shinjukustation, one of the busiest in tokyo, yuou can probably walk for a kilometer underground...

You can plug electrical appliances from north america into japan sockets. teh voltage, or current, whichever it is, is only slightly slower or less than at home. my battery charger worked fine, though took a little longer perhaps. apparently northamerican clocks run slow here.

more to come...