Time in Japan is seen as a valuable commodity that shouldn?t be ?wasted?.
Japanese people work very hard long days and often six and sometimes seven days a week and usually only have one week off a year.
Therefore they usually spend that one week traveling, preferably overseas, and that travel time is usually packed with as much activity as possible.
Their one or two days off a week are also packed as full as possible as is their time after work.
Just sitting at home relaxing or watching TV is seen as wasteful (motai nai).
Another facet of the lack of leisure time is an obsession with food.
If you watch Japanese TV you will see programs on a number of channels at any given time on the preparation of food or good places to eat food including extreme close ups of people eating and enjoying food.
Great discussion takes place on how tasty the food looks and how tasty it really is.
Food is one of the pleasures that can be enjoyed by everyone even if they have limited time so they make sure that they enjoy it to the fullest!
The value of time (and perhaps manners) is also seen in the obsession with punctuality in Japan.
Arriving late is seen as very rude as is arriving early as it may make the other person feel that they were late even though they were not!
Customer service is also strongly focused on speedy action so as not to waste the customer?s valuable time.
Another interesting time reference in Japan is that the year is still referenced to the year of the reign of the current or former emperors.
On current official documents you will see the year ?19? or ?20? referring to the year of the current emperor.
On documents referring to periods prior to 20 years ago you will see the name of the period and then the year (e.g. Showa 19).
This means that when a long ago date is referred to mathematics must be applied to work out how long ago it actually was.
This system can be quite confusing for us foreigners who are not used to it!!
Another interesting (sometimes funny) one is the popular use of the 24 hour clock.
It is widely used but many people here (maybe sign writers) just can?t seem to get their heads around it.
Shops are often open ?0700-2500? (25 hours in a day??!!!!)
Sometimes signs say 1300PM. (As opposed to 1300am???
)
In the practice of Kyudo time taken to perform the various actions is crucial and is coordinated with breath and the other people performing the kata but elements are also referenced to when ?the time is right? which is more about feel than an exact measurement which makes it harder to achieve.
An ambiguity of Japanese life is the various technologies in use here which are often state of the art and well ahead of most other countries and yet, at the same time, many facets of Japanese life are well behind the common practices in most modern countries.
An example is women?s rights and the status of women in general which are maybe 50 years behind the rest of the world.
Often in Japan it feels like living in the future while at other times it feels like living in the past.
Yet another example of that is that it is not uncommon to see a brand new tall modern building beside a 500 year old cottage with an old man growing his vegetables in the garden.
The past and the present side by side.
