Japan has been pleasantly surprising me since I arrived here, and it’s time I gave it some public credit.
You can often notice the effort that has gone into improving little everyday things, and those small improvements add up to making life easier in ways you wouldn’t expect.
Take pedestrian crossings for example. Have you ever stood at one, waiting endlessly for the light to turn green, wondering how much longer you’d have to wait? Probably. But in Japan, you don’t have to wonder — you already know. There’s a bar of lights that shrinks to indicate exactly how much time is left, whether it’s red or green. Simple, but incredibly helpful.
Or restaurant tables. Not even in fancy restaurants — I first noticed this in a McDonald’s, but then realized it’s almost everywhere. Underneath the tabletop, there’s often a slightly sloped ledge built into the table itself, so you have a clean place to store your bag instead of leaving it on the floor. Such a small thing, but so, so useful.
There’s honestly so much I could talk about — little things that are slowly making me fall in love with this place — but I don’t want to dilute the limelight on what I really want to talk about today: the people.
I have never seen such dedication to work as I have in Japan.
This morning, we checked out of our guesthouse and were on our way towards the city center, when we ran into a small hiccup — the ticket machine didn’t show the route we wanted to take. We’d been through too many of these hiccups already to get fazed, but the fact remained that we needed to take this train the Google Maps promised us would take us to where we wanted to go.
We had all of our luggage to haul around with us, so simply walking to the next station on the line wasn’t a particularly appealing option.
Thankfully, a station staff member appeared at exactly the right time. He didn’t speak English but it was quite obvious what we were trying to do. Gesticulating, he informed us that we were trying to get on the wrong platform. We’d need to exit, cross the railway tracks, and enter the station on the other side, where the machines would work.
It took us a few minutes to get ourselves and all our luggage to ground level, and the crossing barricades lowered just as we approached.
While we stood there waiting though, that same gentleman walked up and stood some distance away from us, also facing the direction of the train tracks. He acknowledged us with a polite nod, but said nothing.
When the crossing finally opened, we made our way toward the station, assuming he had work to do on the other platform.
But instead, he walked straight to the ticket machines and waited ahead for us. He asked where we were going, typed the destination into the machine, printed the maximum number of tickets it would allow at once and was about to repeat the process for the rest too before we intervened, assuring him that we understood it and could take it from there, at which point he bowed again and scurried away.
It wasn’t in his job description to go beyond telling us where the right machines to get our tickets were. It wouldn’t have affected his own life one bit if we’d wandered around for another hour trying to figure things out. But out of pure concern for five complete strangers (Chachu had already left), he took it upon himself to make sure we got where we needed to go. He didn’t even speak English, and we spoke no Japanese. Yet he still put in the effort — gesturing, explaining, ensuring we were okay.
It reminded me of a similar incident that happened seven years ago, the last time we were in Japan. We were looking for a cat café (no idea what Google Maps was like back then — I wasn’t the one navigating), and after struggling for a while at one point we gave up and asked a woman on the street for directions.
Turned out it was still a few minutes away, and she didn’t know the exact location either but she asked around for us and instead of just telling us where to go, she walked us all the way there.
I’ve narrated that experience to so many people — that memory stuck with me all this time, and so will this one.
You might say that people like this exist everywhere — and sure, some might — but in Japan, it’s not just about the occasional person who stands out. It’s a pattern. There have been so many of these small moments that it doesn’t feel like a coincidence anymore — it feels cultural.
Convenience store staff, train station employees — they don’t just do their jobs, they go out of their way to be helpful. And it’s not even about work; it’s just part of who they are. Like the woman with the cat café, or the countless other strangers who have realized we were struggling, offered, and even gone wildly out of their way to help.
Maybe it’s something ingrained early on, in school or at home. A sense of responsibility towards others, a quiet but deep-rooted kindness. Whatever it is, the world could learn a lot from it.