In public, you may find it difficult to find a Western-style sitting toilet in many stores, restaurants, schools and places of work. If you look hard enough, you should find at least one stall with a Western-style toilet in each bathroom in most modern buildings, but the majority of toilets in public stalls are actually Eastern-style squat toilets, which look like oblong, porcelain-lined holes in the ground.

As part of a society that values cleanliness, the Japanese continue to use this ancient style of squat toilets because they require no contact with a person at all, so there’s no chance of germs or messes accumulating on a seat and spreading from person to person. Men can easily use a squat toilet when urinating as they can stand. As far as women urinating or either gender going #2, the user must face the toilet and place one foot on either side of the squat toilet, bend the knees entirely, and balance their rear end a few inches above the toilet, without making any contact. When finished, the user can use toilet paper and then hit a flush lever.

After years of practice or perhaps just because of genetic disposition, Asian people can usually bend this way and stay balanced because their feet remain flat on the ground. However, when most foreigners try to bend this way, they naturally tend to remain on the balls of their feet, making it more difficult to balance. Obviously, many older people or people with mobility issues will find these toilets impossible to use. That’s why it may be best for foreigners to search out the Western-style toilet stall, if possible.

You may also notice a pair of slippers in a stall or outside a bathroom, particularly in older buildings with only squat toilets. The idea is to keep bathroom germs in the bathroom and keep other germs out of the bathroom. It’s implied that you should put on the bathroom slippers (and take off your own shoes–assuming you haven’t already, which you most likely have in an old-fashioned Japanese building) only when using the toilet and leave the slippers where you found them when you’re finished for the next person.

In public bathrooms, you may hear strange sounds coming from other stalls, particularly if you’re a lady. Or you may notice an odd panel on the wall. The noise may sound like mechanical trickling water or white noise or any other strange sound. This is because many Japanese people are embarrassed to be heard going to the bathroom (the tinkle or plop) and so would rather drown it out. Some women carry their own portable soundmakers expressly for this purpose, but you may find what’s called an otohime panel in your stall that will make noises for you.

Another important note when using a public bathroom is that you should bring your own hand towel! To save energy and cut back on waste, most public bathrooms do not have hand dryers or paper towels available. People are expected to purchase their own small reusable hand towel and carry it in a baggie in their purse or pocket to use after washing their hands. Some bathrooms (usually in more older buildings) also do not have soap; you can carry a small bar of soap in a hard case along with you for this purpose. However, many bathrooms in the more modern buildings will have soap and hand dryers available.

Japanese homes (unless it’s an old-fashioned home, in which case you’re likely only to find squat toilets) are where you’ll find those mechanical Western-style toilets with many interesting features. Most toilets in Japanese homes at least have a bidet function (with which you can spray water on your behind to clean it off) and an air-drying function so that you won’t even have to use toilet paper (although you may, if you like). Any other function (such as seat heating, automatically opening and closing lid, automatic flushing, and a thermostat for the room temperature, among others) is pure extra entertainment.

Oh, one more thing: you’ll notice that in Japanese homes, the toilet is never in the same room as the bathtub and/or shower. It’s often in a very small closet-like room across the way or next to the shower/bathtub room. This is again a testament to the Japanese culture’s love of cleanliness, so that no toilet-related bacteria or filthiness can spread into the place where people clean themselves.

Obon occurs on a lunar calendar and is different each year–and is even different in the same year among different regions–but occurs sometime between July and August. This year, most of Japan had Obon festivities from August 7th through the 17th.

Mukae-bon takes place on the first day of the Obon festival. After thoroughly cleaning their home, Japanese families light special Obon chochin lanterns inside the home and the family members walk the lanterns to the family gravesite area (if possible–they may just hang the lanterns outside the door and call them home as well). They call their ancestors’ spirits home and it is thought that these spirits reside within the homes’ Buddhist altars for the duration of the festival. The family keeps the lanterns lit beside the altar and also decorates the altars with flower arrangements and incense. They offer food to the spirits throughout their one-week “stay” in the home. On the last day of Obon, Okuri-bon, the family will walk the lit lanterns back to the gravesite in order to guide them back to the afterlife.

Because Obon takes place in the summer, the thought of ghosts wandering among the living permeates into Japanese culture as a whole. Like Halloween in the West, the Obon festival becomes a time for spooky tales, horror movies, ghost sightings, and the Japanese equivalent of a haunted house, which is sometimes called kimodameshi, a “test of courage.” At night, people will dress up like ghosts in the grounds of a Buddhist or Shinto temple and groups of people will split into groups of no more than two in order to face the dark, spooky path to the top of the temple. (These trials are usually undertaken by teenagers and young adults.)

Have you ever celebrated Obon in Japan? Have you ever gone on a kimodameshi? Would you like to?

While sing-along was nothing new even in the US at the time, the concept of karaoke blossomed in the 1970s in Japan. Musical entertainment during dinner has been a long-standing cultural tradition and it was during the 1970s that a drummer named Inoue Daisuke first decided to market a tape player that played music (so that people wouldn’t need to play the instruments) at ¥100 (about $1) a song. The machines were too expensive for most people to purchase, so hotels, restaurants, and bars tended to rent them out for parties at those establishments.

Later in the decade, businesses actually developed with the karaoke machine at the center. “Karaoke boxes” were places that offered sound-proof rooms for small groups to rent while singing with karaoke machines. These businesses really took off, eventually booming in the 1980s (when the phenomenon and the word “karaoke” was exported to the West). They’re still quite popular today.

Karaoke boxes typically serve alcohol (which frees legal adults’ inhibitions and makes them more likely to have the courage to sing in public!) and food upon request. You just need to pick up the in-room phone and place your order. Rooms are usually available at a set hourly rate, although you may be charged by how many people you have in your group as well. You can even rent a room in a karaoke box by yourself if you’re too embarrassed to sing in front of other people! Karaoke song catalogs typically include mostly Japanese songs and Western songs (which everyone tries to sing in English).

Anthropologists have surmised that karaoke is especially popular in a country like Japan where the general population works extremely hard and needs a physically freeing way to unwind. In Japan, most people don’t care how good a singer you are, nor do they make a big deal and laugh if you’re a bad singer. They just enjoy letting go with each other after a hard day at work or school.

Have you ever sung karaoke? Have you sung karaoke in a Japanese-style restaurant or karaoke box? Would you like to sing with a group of Japanese people?

There is no singular simmering sauce used in all dishes, but popular ones include dashi (the stock used in miso soup), soy sauce, and mirin (a type of rice wine). Ingredients typically (but not always) included are onions, eggs, and seafood. One of the most popular types of donburi is oyakodon, which literally means “parent-child donburi.” This is because it consists of both chicken (the “parent”) and egg (“the child”). Oyakodon also includes onions and may be simmered in a variety of sauces, but is usually simmered in a soy sauce mixture.

Another popular donburi dish is katsudon, which features fried pork cutlets, egg, and onions. However, there are many seafood varieties, such as tenshidon, which offers a crab meat omelet over rice, and tekkadon, which features spicy raw tuna and seaweed. There’s also unadon, which includes cooked eel.

You can find beef in donburi dishes such as gyuudon, which features just beef and onions, and tanindon, which is like oyakodon, only with beef in place of the chicken. (“Tanin” means “stranger,” since the beef and egg would have no familial relation.)

Donburi are typically inexpensive dishes available quick to order. You may find a small Japanese restaurant with only counter seating, but turnover is fast since the food is made quickly and you’ll be able to get a seat without much wait. Just don’t linger around more than necessary, as you’ll want to free up your seat for another customer.

Donburi dishes are also popular ways to prepare leftovers and give them additional flavor. Home chefs need only simmer some meat and vegetables from a previous meal together in sauce and serve them over steamed rice.

Have you ever eaten a donburi dish? Which one? Which ones sounds the most appealing to you and why?

Kobe is home to a number of famous Japanese companies, such as Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Kobe Steel, and ASICS, which is a sportswear and athletic equipment company. Global companies that make their Japanese headquarters in Kobe include Nestle and Proctor & Gamble. With so many companies and trades in Kobe, the area among the busiest for business and office jobs in Japan.

If you’re just there to sightsee, the first thing you’ll notice is the Rokko Mountains, which frame the long, rather thin city of Kobe on the opposite side of the ocean. The apex of the Rokko Mountains is about 3055 feet high. If you’re interested in seeing the city of Kobe from the mountains, there are a number of observation decks, restaurants, museums, and even a botanical garden along the mountainside. Perhaps most famous is the Arima Onsen (read here about onsen) atop the mountain, from which you can bathe and see the city at a stunning height. Taking a bus to the onsen from the city will only cost you about US$20 round-trip.

You can’t leave Kobe (unless you’re a vegetarian or not a fan of beef) without trying some Kobe beef. Easily one of the highest quality beef types in all of Japan, other Japanese cities import Kobe’s black Tajima-ushi Wagyu cattle beef. Some of the highest quality cuts of steak made from Kobe beef can cost about US$500 (!), but you can sample much more affordable Kobe beef in anything from burgers to shabu shabu to sushi (cooked) to sukiyaki.

Your trip to Kobe would be incomplete without a ride on the giant Ferris wheel at Kobe Harborland. The view from the Ferris wheel at night is stunning!

Have you ever been to Kobe? Have you ever tried Kobe beef? Is the beef worth the rave reviews it gets? Have you ever visited the Rokko Mountains?

Curry has only been in Japan since the late 19^th century, but it’s already considered a fairly quintessential Japanese dish. Curry made its way to Japan via the English Navy. As India was an English colony at the time, the British had been influenced by Indian cooking and introduced the way in which they replicated the dish to the Japanese once Japan opened up to the West. In the British recipe, curry mimicked the style of Western stew, and that became the basis of Japanese curry.

Japanese curry took a while to catch on, but it positively flourished in the late 1960s. Besides being available in many food stands and restaurants, the curry roux mix made it possible for Japanese homemakers to easily make the dish at home. It wasn’t until the 1990s that actual Indian-style curry became somewhat popular in Japan as well.

Japanese curry is traditionally much less spicy than Indian curry, although it can be extra spicy at the chef’s discretion. The sauce is typically made from curry powder, flour and oil (and can more easily be purchased rather than made in the form of curry roux in supermarkets). The basic vegetables cooked in the sauce are carrots, onions and potatoes, but the chef can add any number of vegetables (and fruits!), such as peas, scallops, eggplants, turnips, broccoli, lotus roots, pears, melons and apples. Also in the curry is usually a meat, either cooked without additives or deep-fried first. Popular choices in Japan include beef, pork, chicken, oyster, duck and even deer.

Served over rice, Japanese curry is known as just “karee” or “karee raisu.” Other popular ways to eat Japanese curry include as the filling in bread (“karee pan”), over Japanese noodles (“karee udon”), with a raw egg (“yaki karee”) and as a soup (“suupu karee”). Japanese curry is usually quite affordable and can be found at most types of restaurants in Japan, fast-food and sit-down alike.

Have you tried Japanese curry? Did you like it more or less than Indian curry? Which type of Japanese curry seems the most appealing to you?

Visual Kei may owe some of its roots to flamboyantly colored and stylized ancient performance styles from Japan, such as kabuki and noh. They may also owe some of their style to glam rock singers, such as Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie). However, their look is largely unique and not quite exactly like any of these influences.

Visual Kei bands typically—but not always—wear clothes inspired by overly colorful or Gothic black-and-white Victorian-era European attire, with lots of ruffles and large, baggy sleeves. Feathers, ribbons and lace are common accessories. The band members’ hair is typically dyed bright colors and is styled in long, wavy or spiky style, but may also be elegantly tied back. The band members may also wear color contacts, since most Japanese people have dark brown eyes and they want to appear a little more European. (However, the contacts may also be a color not found in human eyes.)

The band members’ faces and exposed skin are also typically painted pure white, which is a direct connection to the kabuki and noh style of theatrics. (Pale, white skin is traditionally seen as a sign of beauty in Japan and may represent delicateness.) Perhaps more closely tied to the theatrical traditions of kabuki and noh is the fact that many Visual Kei bands feature at least one band member who dresses explicitly as a woman—despite being a man. All of the band members tend to embrace a sense of androgyny, but some more so than others.

The type of music you might hear from a Visual Kei band might be described as some sort of punk, classical music or operatic music and glam rock mix, with hints of metal. Songs can be both hard-core and upbeat or slow and ballad-like.

Visual Kei debuted in the late 1980s and was quite popular during the 1990s, but the popularity died down somewhat toward the end of the decade. It’s had a sort of revival since 2007, but it’s more popular these days with a core audience than a widespread one.

Here’s a taste of some Visual Kei:

~Versailles, a modern band~

~Malice Mizer, one of the most popular bands from the ‘90s (now disbanded)~

What do you think of Visual Kei music? What about the bands’ style? What do you think is more important to this genre of music, the music itself or the style of the band?

Taketori Monogatari (“The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”), which is sometimes called Kaguya-hime (“Princess Kaguya”), is perhaps the oldest classic Japanese fairy tale. The story centers around a beautiful woman named Kaguya whose hair shines like the moon. She is found as a finger-sized baby inside of a shining bamboo tree by an old, childless bamboo cutter. The bamboo cutter and his wife decide to raise the child. The tiny baby grows into a beautiful woman (of normal size) and as the old couple raises her, they become rich because inside every bamboo tree Kaguya’s father cuts is a nugget of gold.

Kaguya’s parents try to keep Kaguya a secret, but news of her beauty spreads throughout the kingdom. Five princes convince Kaguya’s father to allow them to compete for her hand in marriage and Kaguya, who is not anxious to marry any of them, presents each bachelor with an impossible task, telling them that the first to complete the task would become her husband. All five failed—some even died. After this, the emperor of Japan asks Kaguya to marry him, but again she rejects even this suitor. Although the emperor continues to love Kaguya and ask for her hand in marriage, she continues to refuse him and instead becomes increasingly despondent. Her parents notice that when she stares at the moon, she cries. Eventually, Kaguya reveals that she’s from the moon and she misses her home.

The Emperor tries to keep her from leaving by placing royal guards around her home, but when celestial beings come for her return, the guards cannot stop them. Kaguya leaves behind a robe as a gift for her adoptive parents and leaves a note of farewell to them and the emperor. Along with her note to the emperor, she leaves a bottle of an immortality elixir, from which she takes a sip. Placing a new feathered robe around her shoulders, she forgets all about her earthly life and departs. Her parents receive her robe but are heartbroken and become sick. The emperor refuses to become immortal and instead writes a reply to Kaguya and asks that his servants take the letter and the elixir to the tallest point in the country and burn them there, hoping that Kaguya will receive the message. This point is the top of Mt. Fuji, and it is said that the mountain gets its name from this act, as the kanji for Fuji can mean “immortality.” It is also said that Fuji’s smoke (which isn’t often visible in modern times as the mountain rarely erupts) is the letter and elixir continuously burning.

Does the tale of Princess Kaguya remind you of any Western fairy tales? Which ones? What messages do you get from this tale?

One of the most well-known pieces of Japanese folklore is the story of Momotaro. Momo translates to “peach” and taro is a somewhat common ending for Japanese boy names. The tale is often called “Peach Boy” in English, though. Momotaro tells of an old Japanese couple who never had children but are surprised to find a huge peach floating down the river one day while the wife is washing clothes. They take the peach home to eat, but as soon as they cut into it, a child pops out. They name the boy Momotaro and he tells them that he was sent by the gods to be their child. Once Momotaro grows into a young adult, he takes it upon himself to go on a quest to vanquish oni (demons) who live on an island called the Onigashima and sometimes leave the island to kidnap and/or eat humans. Along the way, Momotaro makes friends with a dog, a pheasant, and a monkey, who join him on his quest in exchange for food. Together, the friends defeat Ura, the leader of the demons and the land is safe once more.

Momotaro should not be confused with Kintaro, another popular Japanese folktale, which is often translated as “Golden Boy.” There are a number of versions of the Kintaro story, all of which have him raised by either his natural mother or an adopted mother alone in the mountains, where he became superhumanly strong. Kintaro’s strength includes the ability to uproot trees, smash rocks barehanded and bend tree trunks even as a toddler. He is most famously depicted in his chubby toddler stage, wearing only a large bib with the kanji for “gold” on it. He becomes friends with the mountain forest animals and eventually, as he grows older, he attracts the attention of a regent of the emperor.Kintaro moves to Kyoto to become one of the legendary Shitenno (“four braves”) who serve alongside this regent, Minamoto no Yorimitsu. At this time, Kintaro takes the name Sakata Kintoki.

Come back next week for a look at two more Japanese fairy tales!

Have you ever heard of Momotaro or Kintaro? What do you think the morals of these stories may be—if there are any? What other Japanese folktales have you heard of?

Yokohama is only about 28 miles south of the city of Tokyo and is nestled along the Tokyo Bay. You can easily catch a train from Tokyo to Yokohama in just over an hour and for only about ¥740 (about US$8). Yokohama is actually one of the cities with the greatest immigrant population; about 75,000 of its residents are from countries such as China, South Korea, the Philippines and Brazil. (As far as its immigration goes, Japan has a high rate of Brazilians, both legal and illegal [by overstaying their work visas] due to the need for laborers.)

Because Yokohama is a somewhat southern city, you can expect humid, hot summers and mild winters with virtually no snowfall. That said, although summer may be the peak tourist season, you’d be better off touring during the fall or winter when fewer visitors pack the streets.

Yokohama is well known for Kannai, a historic district featuring thoroughly modern architecture and stores (but many “firsts,” such as the first place in Japan to sell ice cream and the first place to sell beer). Yokohama is also home to Japan’s tallest building, the Landmark Tower, as well as the Cosmo Clock 21, the world’s largest clock and one of the world’s largest Ferris wheels, which offers a stunning view of the city that’s not to be missed after sunset. You can expect lots of great places to shop in Yokohama, such as the Motomachi area, as well as great places to stroll along the harbors.

For more classical Japanese architecture enthusiasts, you may want to head to Sankei Garden, which features a gorgeous array of classical Japanese gardens and buildings. Tickets cost only around ¥500 (about US$5.50)

Have you ever visited Yokohama? If you’re touring Japan, would you prefer to visit the big metropolitan areas or the areas with more historical sites?