Early impressions of Japan

It has been about 2 weeks since the time I arrived and I know that this is very short time to talk enough about Japan, but it was still enough time for me to get some cultural shocks. At first, I was surprised by the bicycle riding culture in Japan. I did not know so many Japanese people use bicycle to travel one place to another and even when going for shopping at department store. It was quite distracting and uncomfortable, when a bike comes through between my friends and me. However, after having bought my own bike, I can not now imagine going to school or grocery shopping without it and I feel also good for being eco-friendly. In addition, all the bicycle registration procedure that I had to go through for the safety of my bike once more impressed me. Since bike registration does not exist in my country and bicycle theft can happen easily. I even lost my bike 3 times. It was amazing to know the fact that in Japan, as long as my bike is registered, it can be still found when it is stolen.

During the orientation week, through participating all the orientation programs and all the paper works that I had to work out in every session, I could also feel that in Japan, all the works or services has to be perfectly, completely done. Not only from school offices, but also from the small bike shop that I bought my bike and small restaurants, I could see the owners, workers doing their best to serve best service in complete way. It seems that ‘finishing off something loosely’ does not exist.