All the “Little Things”

Before I came to Japan I asked a couple people who had been there what they thought. Each person said they enjoyed the “little things” and gave a couple examples. It wasn’t until I arrived that I really began to understand. The little details in Japan are like nothing else in the world. What do you mean by little details Bill? Well, let us start with our bathroom.

1 - The bathtub can automatically fill and reheat itself at a touch of a button.


2 - Water flowing from the nozzle of the bath tub rotates in a way that it makes no noise as it crashed into the water at the bottom of the tub, so it is more relaxing.


3 - The shower room has a heater, cooler, and drier so the room is warm/cool before you get in and you can dry it when you are done.


4 - Our toilet – well lets just say we are really going to miss all the cool features (and there are many).


Now each of these are small things and by themselves they are just neat, combined though, you get a bathroom you enjoy spending time in. This is the concept of Tokyo and it starts to really spoil you. Another example is going to a small convenience store (there is literally one on almost every block) and getting some ice cream and a microwave pizza (for US comparison only). In the US you would get a bag to put your purchases in and your receipt. In Japan you would get a plastic spoon for your ice cream (with the same brand name on the spoon as the ice cream), they would microwave your pizza for you and supply you with utensils to eat the pizza with and two bags so that you don’t warm your ice cream. If you were in a nicer store they would have given you dry ice to make sure your ice cream stayed cold until you were ready to eat it. All of this is at no additional charge. It’s like this with everything from food to skyscrapers no detail is too small for the Japanese. The number of small things quickly becomes very overwhelming and you find yourself absolutely loving it.