Japan: Clean, Quiet, Polite, Safe - and Awesome

M. Bogen, Tokyo Station at night, Oct. 2025

During our three week tour of Japan, a range of impressions and talking points constantly arose. Here are a few. The first thing you notice, of course, is how clean the environment is. We spent considerable time in both Tokyo and Kyoto, which are huge, busy cities, and quite literally never saw even the slightest amount of litter, despite the fact that there are very few trash cans. Or maybe it is because there are so few. Famously, the cans in Japan were removed in 1995 after the terrorist gas attack in the Tokyo subway, so as not to provide hiding places for bombs. One outcome has been that everyone takes responsibility for their own waste. One becomes very conscious of how much trash is being generated and how one will dispose of it. Here, in the Boston area, there is a lot of litter, and being good liberals it was decided that the problem wasn't human irresponsibility. No, it was structural, with there being not enough trash-can capacity. So they invested in these super expensive trash compacter cans that never overflow. The result? You see trash all around these cans, because people can't be bothered to even open the compacter chute. The problem is human, not environmental. You do see city workers in Japan whose job it is to clean and sweep. But it's almost comical. I saw one guy carefully sweeping up the smallest amount of debris, I mean tiny. They keep their streetscapes cleaner than my kitchen floor! Also key: he was using a whisk broom, not a leaf blower, because that amount of noise would be disrespectful of and disturbing to others.

And this noise thing is a big deal. At one point, my wife said, have you noticed that there are no horns honking? Anywhere at all. Given the volume of traffic in Tokyo and Kyoto, this is astonishing. I think I heard one honk in three weeks. Lynn said she heard three. In NYC, you'd hear three very aggressive honks within your first half hour in town. Same in Boston, where the horn is used for offensive purposes, rather than the defensive ones for which they were intended. Add in the fact that in Japan many of the vehicles are electric and what you get is a shockingly quiet urban environment. Certainly no one blazes around with their mufflers removed, a not-so-charming practice in the US. Plus they are good, attentive drivers, so the temptation to honk is much lower, though I doubt they would honk even in the presence of a bad or spaced-out driver. You also will never hear anyone yakking on their cell phones in public. Naturally, one of the first things we encountered when we arrived back in LA was exactly that. We were in the Delta Sky Lounge and some asshole Master of the Universe was loudly working a deal on his phone for all of us to hear. Thank you for sharing. It goes without saying they don't blast their music in Japan for others to hear.

Of course this politeness is legendary. All of these norms I'm discussing often are traced back to the fact that Japan is an island nation/culture, so one must pay close attention to interpersonal matters if you are to get along with so many people in close proximity. Which always begs the question, Is that politeness all on the surface, or are they seething with resentment underneath? Who knows? But I can tell you that the actual lived experience of it, sincere or not, is wonderful. This is the essence of behaviorism: That the effect of something isn't necessarily correlated with intent, and actions have a life of their own. One of my favorite manifestations is how when you are at a store or restaurant if you have to wait even one minute for something, they say Thank you for waiting. In my mind I'm like, What? If want to know what real waiting is like, wait until you experience American "service." In the US, a waiter will disappear for 10 or 20 minutes, and a simple drink order could take the same amount of time. In Japan, you rarely wait for more than a minute or two. This makes going out more pleasant. Another nice tradition is how they bow when entering a room. Probably the greatest thing we experienced service-wise was the ubiquitous presence of English-speaking personnel in the very busy train stations ready and able to help any tourist who is naturally experiencing some confusion with how things work. We travel independently, not part of any tour group, so we took a LOT of trains. And I have to say, it would not have been possible without their easy-to-access service and help. Oh, I should add that Japan is also very safe. As a traveler you don't worry about pick pockets or someone stealing your passport, which is really nice and not like traveling in Europe. Every time I saw a police officer during the trip I wondered what the hell they even have to do there!

Given all this, it makes one a bit wary of returning to the widespread vulgarity of the US. Indeed it makes one want to stay. Here, one barely gets through the day without a provocation or insult to the senses, or, indeed, to one's dignity. And yet, for all the benefits I have just described, countless Japanese can't wait to leave and come to the US, crassness and all. That's because the conformity issue is real. If the dark side of American freedom is public vulgarity, the dark side of Japan's pleasing social order is the pressure to follow the rules. As the adage goes, any nail that sticks up will get hammered down. One aspect of this shadow side becomes apparent late at night on the trains, when the salary men who have just gone through yet another mandatory session of heavy drinking are passed out in their seats. And this, after a 10 to 12 hour work day which they will have to start all over again at 8:00 a.m. sharp the next day, green around the gills perhaps, but with a fresh suit and tie. 

As far as I could tell, this Japan of overworking and excessive allegiance to the company is offset to a degree by the Japan that represents the concern with refined aesthetics that many of us associate with this unique land. We encountered a number of Japanese who don't appear to play the striving game and who seek lives of balance and beauty. These tended to be shopkeepers and restaurant and cafe owners, which makes sense because that's who a tourist would encounter. Just a quick, humorous example. We were in a hip little wine bar in Kanazawa when we noticed that at the bottom of the menu it said something to the effect of, Please don't post a Google review of my establishment. I'm a single proprietor and the bar would get too crowded and busy for me to handle. Staffing up was out of the question! He liked things just the way they were. This reminded me of a story the poet Gary Snyder would tell about his days as a student and a Zen monastery on Kyoto. As they were going about their daily chores, Gary said, You know, it would be faster if we did it this other way. The senior monk replied, simply: We don't want to do it faster. Long story short: I love the Japanese, contradictions and all.