Whacky Japan

A warning found at Kamakura 

For years and years I've been reading news sites and, when in America, sometimes watching the news, and around 99 percent of the time Japan is covered in the news, it's because Japan has done some crazy, outlandish thing that merits news coverage.



Yes, Japan has lots of inexplicably strange things. But I would argue that every culture has really strange elements to it. I have been looked at strangely by people from other countries for eating fruit roll-up, for example ("It looks like you're eating plastic. Why would you eat that?").



Since I feel that there are too many web sites devoted to the craziness of Japanese culture, and too much of the news covers only the stranger aspects, I am going to try and cover what makes Japan "normal" in the following entries.



If you feel the need to tell me about some new crazy thing someone in Japan did, I will do my best to counter it with some example of a crazy thing an American has done that made the news.