What they don’t tell you about Japan, blog 1. Noise

After a few days of our visit to Japan we had seen a taster of Tokyo and Osaka and the main culture shock apart from the obvious language and alphabet barrier was the noise. For somewhere with so little pollution anywhere in the form of litter and smog etc. The has amount of human introduced noise is outstanding.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad point although it may first sound like it 😀.

Close your eyes and: Being in Japan is like being in a fair ground or amusement park.

The buses, trains, trams, shops, toilets, doors even the little wagon the guy who picks up rubbish pushed around are all playing some kind of child-like jingle.

We were a few hundred metres from the summit of Mount Enos on Miyajima when we started hearing drumming from a religious ceremony coming from the temple above. It was like the music starting just before something exciting happens in Tomb Raider.

We stayed in a Ryoken where there was pipe music being played from speakers in the corridors.

Our first hotel was in Electric Town Tokyo where every 5th building or so was an arcade or a Karaoke bar blasting different sounds as you pass.

Staff from shops, resteraunts, hotels, and attractionsare all so very welcoming talking to you as you pass and encouraging you to come in.

In many resteraunts as you enter and the first member of staff says hello to you either in English or Japanese they say it in a mannor to alert all other staff so they they in turn or collectively can also welcome you. Similarly when you leave anywhere who ever takes your bill or sees you leave makes a big point about thanking you to alert the rest of the team who join in the chorus.

Many times we would look to each other in a hotel room or a train or just in the street when there is a faint noise and wander what it is and where it’s coming from only for it to gently increase in volume until we can tell it is some kind of music being played to drown out the noise of AC or engine sounds from the train etc.

If you are lucky enough to visit an Izykaya resteraunt you can sit and enjoy the incredible sounds of the chefs, bar staff and waiting staff calling out orders, instructions and greetings to other customers and each other. In some resteraunts customers also call out there own orders to join the fun. The atmosphere created by all this mixed with the smoke from the grill and the beer/sake/umeshu etc. you may be drinking really is addictive.

So if visiting be Japan, be prepared for lot of noise and don’t forget to listen.

Thanks for reading.