Us and the Kiddos: April 2018

We visited Japan way back at the beginning of February, but I am way behind in my blogging- so there ya go. So without keepin' y'all waiting any longer than absolutely necessary....let's go to Japan!

Cool Facts about Japan:

In Japanese, the name “Japan” is Nihon or Nippon, which means “Land of the Rising Sun.”
Japan has the third longest life expectancy in the world with men living to 81 years old and women living to almost 88 years old.
Japan consists of over 6,800 islands
Home to 33 million people, the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area is the largest populated metropolitan region in the world.
Japan has more than 3,000 McDonald’s restaurants, the largest number in any country outside the U.S
Each spring, Japan has a festival that celebrates both the penis and female fertility called Kanamara Matsuri, or “Festival of the Steel Phallus.”
Twenty-one percent of the Japanese population is elderly (over the age of 65), the highest proportion in the world. There are more elderly than there are children in Japan today.
The Japanese eat more fish than any other people in the world, about 17 million tons per year.
More than 5 billion servings of instant ramen noodles are consumed in Japan each year.
Japanese Kobe beef is famous worldwide for its succulence and taste. The Japanese cows this beef comes from receive daily massages and, in summer, are fed a diet of saké and beer mash. True Kobe beef comes from only 262 farms in the Tajima region, of which Kobe is the capital, and each of which raises an average of 5 of the animals at a time. In the United States, Kobe beef is called Wagyu beef
Japan has around 5.5 million vending machines with one on almost every street corner. There are vending machines that sell beer, hot and cold canned coffee, cigarettes, wine, condoms, comic books, hot dogs, light bulbs, bags of rice, toilet paper, umbrellas, fish bait, fresh eggs, porn magazines, and even used women’s underwear.
Japan has the second lowest homicide rate in the world, but it also home to the spooky “suicide forest” Aokigahara at the base of Mt. Fuji. It is the second most popular place in the world for suicides after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge
The Japanese have such a low birth rate that there are more adult diapers sold than baby diapers.
Cherry blossoms (sakura) are Japan's national flower
Japanese ganguro (“black face”) fashion was started in the 1990s and has young women tanning their skin as dark as possible, bleaching their hair, and using extremely colorful makeup in contrast to the traditional Japanese pale-skinned, dark-haired standard of beauty
The world’s shortest escalator is in the basement of More’s department store in Kawasaki, Japan; it has only 5 steps and is 32.8 inches (83.3 cm) high.
Yaeba, or crooked teeth, are considered attractive in Japan—so much so that girls go to the dentist to have their teeth purposefully unstraightened
Women in ancient Japan blackened their teeth with dye as white teeth were considered ugly. This practice, called ohaguro, continued until the late 1800s
Shinjuku station, Tokyo’s main train station, is the busiest in the world with over 2 million people passing through it every day.
Ninety percent of all mobile phones sold in Japan are waterproof because youth like to use them even while showering
Ninety-eight percent of adoptions that take place in Japan are of male adults, so family businesses can stay within those families
The sole Japanese man who survived the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1914, Masabumi Hosono, was called a coward in his country for not dying with the other passengers.
In Japan, it is acceptable to take a nap, called inemuri, on the job—it is viewed as evidence of exhaustion from working very hard
When Japanese people meet, they traditionally bow instead of shake hands, and the lowest bow shows the deepest respect.
During World War II, Japan bombed China with fleas infested with Bubonic plague.
In Japan, Kit Kat candy bars come in flavors like grilled corn, Camembert cheese, Earl Gray tea, grape, and wasabi. The Japanese pronounce Kit Kat like “Kitto Katsu,” which sounds like “You are sure to pass” in Japanese, and so they make a popular gift to students during entrance exam season
Around 25 billion pairs of waribashi (disposable chopsticks) are used in Japan each year. This is equivalent to the timber needed to build 17,000 homes.
In Japan, Kentucky Fried Chicken is a typical Christmas Eve feast
The biggest Japanese community outside of Japan is in Brazil.
Japanese “love hotels” are short-stay hotels mainly designed for amorous couples and are identified by the presence of heart symbols. They have different room rates: a “rest” rate as well as an overnight rate. An estimated 2% of Japan’s population visits one each day.
Japanese macaques, or snow monkeys, are the fabled animals that “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.” The macaques in northern Honshu live farther north than any other monkey in the world.
It is appropriate to slurp noodles, especially soba (buckwheat), when eating in Japan. Slurping indicates the dish is delicious. It also cools down the hot noodles.
Hadaka Matsuri, or Naked Festival, is a kind of festival where thousands of Japanese men remove their clothing in public due to the belief that a naked man has a greater ability to absorb evil spirits. Only the most intimate parts of the body are covered with a cloth called a fundoshi.
Widespread inbreeding of dogs in Japan has resulted in one of the highest rates of genetic defects for canines in the world.
The Japanese avoid the number four (shi) because it sounds the same as the word for death. Tall buildings do not have a fourth floor. Tea and sake sets are sold with five cups. Three or five is the desirable number of guests in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. As a rule, odd numbers are preferred over even numbers in Japan