The Gaijin’s Guide to Politeness

The Japanese are famous for being polite. As a foreigner, you’ll get some leeway in terms of cultural norms, but the more respectful you can be of their culture, the better. The younger generations also place less importance on this and will sometimes be very familiar right away, but until you know, it’s always better to be too polite than accidentally rude. The Japanese language itself has an entire system of forms to deal with levels of politeness — in-group vs. out-group, age and seniority, humble, honorific, and on and on — but as someone who doesn’t speak much or any Japanese, it’s fine to just keep the non-linguistic stuff in mind.

Here’s an overview of a few major aspects of politeness in Japan.

The Gaijin’s Guide to Japanese Street Fashion

“Japan” has come to mean “weird” for a lot of people, especially when it comes to fashion. It’s true that you’ll see a lot of things there that you’d never see in other places, but it’s not the case that extreme fashions are the norm — in fact, Japan values homogeneity, so standing out in the ways that youth in Tokyo do is even more of a statement there. Still, you can get away with some things that you just couldn’t in, say, New York.

So remember that like any other major metropolis, Tokyo has droves of impeccably-dressed citizens as well as plenty of average joes. That said, here are some of the less conventional styles you might encounter there.

Recipe: Pasta Aioli

Photo by brody4

Here’s another quick and easy meal my boyfriend and I cooked up while we were living in Tokyo. We were out of rice and feeling too lazy to spend the time on a more involved pasta sauce, so he suggested we do an olive oil base instead.

Pasta Aioli

Prep time: About 10 minutes
Cooking time: About 10 minutes
Serves: 2-3 people

We picked from the ingredients we had on hand, but there are all sorts of things you could put in this — olives would’ve been a really good addition.