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While crazy, this shows another example of the ways things change in Japan. Nothing ever changes until one day it changes overnight. April 23rd someone tweets

While crazy, this shows another example of the ways things change in Japan. Nothing ever changes until one day it changes overnight. April 23rd someone tweets the bleeding obvious. May 17th (apparently), the entire country is using a different system. But for decades before that, there would be absolutely nothing you would have been able to do to incite change. It would have been absolutely impossible. I always find it amazing that change always goes from 0 to 100 in a matter of days.

JimiofEden 6y ago
Do you have other examples of this? I've heard this anecdotally over and over again, but I would be interested in reading actual instances where this is the case
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  The OG example is the Meiji era, when Japan went from a strictly isolationist feudal state to an industrialized and expansionist powerhouse in a few decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_(era) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_(era)
- mikekchar 6y ago
  The biggest one I've seen with my own eyes is smoking outside in public. When I first came to Japan you would see lots of people smoking while walking, or smoking on outside train platforms. Then one day somebody put up a big billboard all over the place that had a drawing of a person holding a cigarette and a child. It said, "You hold a cigarette at the height of a child's eye" or something to that effect. From that day on, practically everyone stopped smoking and walking. It's really incredibly rare to see it now. It might have been a localised effect around where I lived, but other people I've talked to from around the country remarked on it as well. I've seen other things like it, but this was the most remarkable to me. The government seems to randomly put up signs like that to see if they take hold. It never seems to go gradually -- with early adopters, etc, etc. Either everybody goes with it or nobody does. I'm trying to think of something that is easy to verify, but it's nearly midnight here and I can't think of anything off hand. If I remember I'll try to post back later.
  - njwi332 6y ago
    Another one I've seen recently is the reaction to covid. I live in Tokyo, and being in tech circles was doing my prep shopping and isolating a few weeks before everyone else. I had one Japanese friend invite me out for drinks like 3 times in a week, I turned her down saying I was isolating due to covid and got a 'wow you're so strict!' reaction. Not two weeks later and the government declares a state of emergency. Suddenly this same friend, and all her friends, are filling Instagram with 'Stay home' stories and virtual workouts. Granted, not everyone in Tokyo took it seriously, but the change in behaviour within the majority of my personal circle was literally overnight. For another one - bubble tea. A year or so back it went from not popular at all to lines over an hour long outside most bubble tea places, and the word 'tapiru' from tapioca and suru - roughly 'to bubble tea' was one of Japans hot phrases for the year [1] [1] https://japantoday.com/category/national/nominees-for-japan%E2%80%99s-2019-buzzwords-include-kutoo-tapiru-and-paprika https://japantoday.com/category/national/nominees-for-japan%...
ekianjo 6y ago
Or things actually never change in Japan, not even overnight. Let's not make rules out of huge exceptions prompted by a crisis. You can still read a book written in 1896 about Japan and hardly find any cultural change at all.
- harpratap 6y ago
  That's not necessarily a bad thing
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    If you like living in a feudal world.
xenospn 6y ago
I remember my first visit to japan in 2009. Everyone had flip phones and no one had a Facebook account. The next year when I came back, everyone had an iPhone and a Facebook account.
- SenHeng 6y ago
  Smartphones and online messaging apps like LINE and Twitter really started taking off after the 3/11 earthquake when all the phone lines went dead but the internet still worked. So that was another one of those almost overnight changes, when the population migrated from emails to online messaging almost immediately.

JimiofEden 6y ago

Do you have other examples of this? I've heard this anecdotally over and over again, but I would be interested in reading actual instances where this is the case

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
The OG example is the Meiji era, when Japan went from a strictly isolationist feudal state to an industrialized and expansionist powerhouse in a few decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_(era) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_(era)
mikekchar 6y ago
The biggest one I've seen with my own eyes is smoking outside in public. When I first came to Japan you would see lots of people smoking while walking, or smoking on outside train platforms. Then one day somebody put up a big billboard all over the place that had a drawing of a person holding a cigarette and a child. It said, "You hold a cigarette at the height of a child's eye" or something to that effect. From that day on, practically everyone stopped smoking and walking. It's really incredibly rare to see it now. It might have been a localised effect around where I lived, but other people I've talked to from around the country remarked on it as well. I've seen other things like it, but this was the most remarkable to me. The government seems to randomly put up signs like that to see if they take hold. It never seems to go gradually -- with early adopters, etc, etc. Either everybody goes with it or nobody does. I'm trying to think of something that is easy to verify, but it's nearly midnight here and I can't think of anything off hand. If I remember I'll try to post back later.
- njwi332 6y ago
  Another one I've seen recently is the reaction to covid. I live in Tokyo, and being in tech circles was doing my prep shopping and isolating a few weeks before everyone else. I had one Japanese friend invite me out for drinks like 3 times in a week, I turned her down saying I was isolating due to covid and got a 'wow you're so strict!' reaction. Not two weeks later and the government declares a state of emergency. Suddenly this same friend, and all her friends, are filling Instagram with 'Stay home' stories and virtual workouts. Granted, not everyone in Tokyo took it seriously, but the change in behaviour within the majority of my personal circle was literally overnight. For another one - bubble tea. A year or so back it went from not popular at all to lines over an hour long outside most bubble tea places, and the word 'tapiru' from tapioca and suru - roughly 'to bubble tea' was one of Japans hot phrases for the year [1] [1] https://japantoday.com/category/national/nominees-for-japan%E2%80%99s-2019-buzzwords-include-kutoo-tapiru-and-paprika https://japantoday.com/category/national/nominees-for-japan%...

ekianjo 6y ago

Or things actually never change in Japan, not even overnight. Let's not make rules out of huge exceptions prompted by a crisis. You can still read a book written in 1896 about Japan and hardly find any cultural change at all.

harpratap 6y ago
That's not necessarily a bad thing
- ekianjo 6y ago
  If you like living in a feudal world.

xenospn 6y ago

I remember my first visit to japan in 2009. Everyone had flip phones and no one had a Facebook account. The next year when I came back, everyone had an iPhone and a Facebook account.

SenHeng 6y ago
Smartphones and online messaging apps like LINE and Twitter really started taking off after the 3/11 earthquake when all the phone lines went dead but the internet still worked. So that was another one of those almost overnight changes, when the population migrated from emails to online messaging almost immediately.