Welcome to Gaia! ::

I think I'm too desensitized to know what is wacky anymore <_>

OK, I'll try harder. Love hotels.
Just.
Love Hotels.

http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotels.html

I want to go to a love hotel for novelty and uhmmm... participation.

The spinning top thing...is absolutely awesome!

I'm surprised about the melonpan too! It's a wonder why I lost so much weight when I was in Japan considering how much I ate those bread encased delicacies... Perhaps they are like the polish puzchi? (sp?)

As a side note, I totally used to wash my hands on the back of the toilet as well. speaking of odd toilet customs, it occurred to me another strange fact. Japan never uses public means to dry ones hands with after washing ones hands. This is not to say that this discourages people to wash their hands but forces the public to use reusable means of drying ones hands, i.e. hand towels; a very popular Japanese phenomenon.

Oh that is really interesting, perhaps that is more a thing you will find in heavily populated areas...or maybe just Oosaka because of their high wattage use in the city/suburbs. I just mentioned it because I don't think I ever encountered a public toilet that had means of drying your hands.

As for the "toilet/bath culture" discrepancies, yes I think Japan and america have very different views on "cleanliness." Like how the bath and the toilet are separate as well as the "washroom" in Japan (traditionally) where as they are all in the same room most often in America. I think this is a shocking thing for most gaijin.

On a slightly similar topic, food preparation and ingestion also holds alot of discrepancies between the two cultures. The major aspect that I think most gaijin don't understand fully is proper chopstick etiquette. How to pass food, from which bowls to take from, bringing the bowl to your mouth, to slurp or not to slurp, etc. All very interesting imho.

Yeah, and I know not every American home heats their bathroom (and not every Japanese home doesn't heat their bathroom).

I think there is a culture gap, but it's not nearly so wide as one might initially imagine.

Additional wacky interesting thing:
The airline food I got on my return flight was actually the best airline food i've ever had in my life. It was very neatly and attractively prepared and was quite well balanced (except for the chocolate chip pastry for breakfast).
Also, Narita's airport is too convenient. There's a mall complete with bank and post office, so just in case you buy too much stuff you can mail it home 3nodding