A trip to Asakusa - City of temples in Tokyo

It was from Morishita sensei that I heard about Asakusa first time while I was attending Japanese language class at OVTA. She mentioned about Asakusa while referring the Japanese word ‘Omiyage’. Omiyage in Japanese means gift or presentation. She told, there are plenty of traditional Japanese Omiyage shops in Asakusa.

Asakusa is a tourist spot both for people visiting in Tokyo from other parts of Japan and for foreigners. Today I got that opportunity to go to Asakusa. In fact, I was thinking to visit Asakusa for quite sometime after hearing about this place from Morishita sensei. I made the trip with a friend who was also wishing to visit Asakusa.

Asakusa is famous for its Sensoji temple. It is a Buddhist temple. Asakusa is a district in Taito Tokyo. There are several more temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals. Asakusa is a traditional Japanese city famous for its temples and festivals.

Coming out of the A4 exit of Asakusa line (Tokyo metro), we asked the way to a Japanese girl standing in front of the exit. She could partly understand our broken Japanese, but she could manage to direct us to the desired location. We walked to the location to where she pointed her finger.

There were many foreign people on the road. I was surprised by seeing the man pulling rickshaws on the road. There are still these kind of old traditional vehicles seen in Tokyo! I could not resist taking photos of those rickshaws on the Asakusa road. I had a wrong notion that rickshaws are popular in India only. Now I realized that was my biggest mistake. I have seen a plenty of human powered rickshaws in India’s Northern states. Still those are bicycle connected. Human pulling rickshaws are considered a human rights violation.

In Asakusa, these rickshaws are maintained as part of tourism. Nobody really want to travel long distances in rickshaws. Sitting and travelling in human pulling rickshaws bring back memories of past mode of transportation. Later I learned that in Japan also rickshaws were popular. Probably I made a big mistake before realizing now that the word rickshaw have its origin in Japanese word Jinrikisha.

In Jinrikisha, we can see a combination of three words like Jin, riki, and sha. The word ‘Jin’ means human or person, ‘riki’ means power or force, and the word ‘sha’ is for vehicle. So, the word ‘Jinrikisha’ is human-powered vehicle! It was a new knowledge for me when my friend explained the concept of Rickshaw. Moreover, my wrong concepts of origin of human powered vehicles were being rewritten when I visited Asakusa. English people called human-powered vehicles ‘Pedicabs’.

Asakusa is famous for its ‘Omiyage’ shops. The street that leads to the Sensoji temple and the nearest area are full of Omiyage shops. We could see many women dressed in Traditional Japanese kimono. Asakusa is famous for geisha population also, I heard.

Asakusa was the center of entertainment in Tokyo for a most part of 20th century Japanese life. Now the attraction for entertainment has shifted to Shinjuku from Asakusa. Still Asakusa is famous for its classical Japanese films as many of the tourists are elderly Japanese who visit Buddhist and Shinto temples of Asakusa.

The real meaning of the psychological term, Empathy in Japan

Empathy is more likely to be connected with psychological feeling of one person for his ability to understand the feeling of another person. Psychology books have references to such kind of feelings human beings possess. The feeling of empathy is said to be the reason of harmony and healthy relationship among the individuals in a society.

Japan is a highly empathetic society. One reason is attributed to its high level of literacy rate. But literacy rate alone can not alone ensure highly developed mind characteristics like empathetic feeling. To understand and act according to the need of another person requires an extra ordinarily developed mind and thought process. While I was in my home country, I was informed by some of my friends that psychology is a well developed branch of knowledge in Japan.

Japanese people have attempted to describe minute fluctuations of mind obviously from their observations on their own individuals. The highest level of understanding of another person’s feeling and realize that it is their own feeling and more over contribute whatever they can to help is a rare characteristic of human beings. In that sense Japan has many citizens with empathy than any where.

I experienced the feeling of empathy from Japanese colleagues, when I met with a physical trouble. The help comes before asking! One of my friend told his experience when he lost his way at a strange place. He went to Osaka alone from Tokyo to meet one of his old friend from his country. In the middle of the searching the friend’s home he lost his way and was unable to even go back to the railway station. To his misery, he missed to carry his mobile phone and did not remember the phone number. He knows only survival Japanese language.

He approached a Japanese person who was riding a bicycle. With his broken Japanese, he asked for help to find out his friends home. The Japanese person told him that his friend’s home is around 1 km far from where he stands. For him it was almost impossible to find out that place. He started worrying how to go there, but could not tell this to the Japanese. To his surprise, the Japanese person asked him if he would not mind to sit on the back of his bicycle, he will take him to the friend’s home.

He was surprised as the Japanese person was riding in the opposite way. The stranger Japanese person took him to his friend’s home. My friend said lot of thanks to him. That is all he could do at that time. The Japanese person returned in his bicycle to his destination. My friend was astonished to see the helping mentality of people of Japan.

This is exactly what we call the living examples of empathy, i.e., putting oneself into the psychological frame of reference of another person, so that the other person’s feelings, thoughts, troubles, miseries, and acting can be well understood. The understanding does not stand still in Japan. They really come out with practical help!

The feeling of Empathy in Japan does not stay as a feeling only inside the mind of people. Japanese people really come out with a solution, if they are able to help, otherwise also they would not forget to say a sorry.

This is what the feeling called empathy really means – Not only understand another person’s feelings and emotions, but really come with practically possible solutions to help him solve out and come out of his troubles!

Japanese politeness and discipline - How to distinguish Japanese people from other East Asians?

It was start of a debate when I declared that I can distinguish a Japanese person from other far east Asians. Probably I was little excited and exaggerated. But I had enough reasons to argue with my friends. The topic I started was interesting to many friends since they were from East Asian countries.

They wanted to know how I can differentiate Japanese people from other East Asian people. In fact, I used to observe the behavior pattern of Japanese people in public and their manners. The attitude of Japanese people to others, especially to people from India is totally different from the attitude of other East Asians towards Indian people. There is a great extent of positive patterns when Japanese people interact with Indians.

By observing East Asian people, I could guess to almost nearly accurately the country of east Asian people. I agree that it is difficult to distinguish Japanese and South Koreans, North Chinese and some Thai people. But most of the time, the behavior pattern helped me to differentiate other East Asians from Japanese.

One of the major characteristics with Japanese public behavior is Discipline. This is what I like to appreciate the whole system of bringing up a generation in Japan. Japanese people and education system has a vision to build future generation and they are well aware of the impacts of discipline in the society.

The robust and healthy Japanese society has been practicing an admirable system of discipline for many decades. History says the modern Japan became a self disciplined society from the time of Edo. I am not a scholar to comment on this. But I can say from my observation of Japanese people for the past one year that Japanese people are different.

There may be an argument when Japanese people say that they are a different human race. The secluded island culture for many centuries has resulted in a kind of oneness among Japanese people and similar cultural proximity among different regions of Japan. This may be the reason for Japanese people thinking that their race is different. By race they mean only the society, I believe.

Even though other East Asians looks like Japanese, they fail to behave like Japanese. In that sense, Japanese culture is different from other East Asian cultures though it is affected. The attitude of majority of people makes the society proud. In that sense Japan has got all to proud of her people. The aligned and programmed nature of behavior of Japanese people makes the things simple in every walk of life.

Airport is the most noticeable place for Japanese politeness. The moment I landed in Hong Kong Airport, I could experience the difference between Japanese and other East Asians, though they look same. The careless and arrogant nature of approach and attitude is missing in Japan Airports. Instead, people are warm and polite. They wish politely every traveler pass through. That is amazing. There are guides with smiling face in Tokyo Airport for any kind of help. Such a convenient and pleasant Airport I have never seen anywhere. Malaysian Airport is another place which reinforced my observation that Japanese people are different from other East Asians in behavior. The same arrogant nature as in Hong Kong I could watch in Kula lumpur airport also.

Why Japan is different? And who told them to behave good to strangers? Why most people at Hong Kong and Malaysia are arrogant?

The answer is in the culture. The cultural background makes the difference. Japan is a country with full fledged development. That development is not limited to the technological field, Japanese people are also developed much higher than other East Asians. That is the reason we miss to experience the politeness and pleasant experiences at Malaysia and other East Asian countries. I have no experience with Korea, but my interaction with Korean people says, they are also warm like Japanese.

Japan has an edge over others with their politeness, discipline and pleasant attitude. That makes life and society beautiful.