Love seems to be in short supply over there. Young people have given up dating, falsely realizing that the practice is “too difficult.”

That’s why a new brand of business emerged in Tokyo’s electronics district. They cater to people looking for affection and companionship.

Soineya emerged around 2012 and was the first to allow people to monetize the human touch.

Customers pay to cuddle or even sleep next to their employees, but sexual requests and behaviors are not legal.

Sleep deprivation is a problem, with the country notorious for having long working days and extremely long social evenings.

Students also study late into the night just to keep up so there’s a lot to do with so little time to do it.

The art of “sleeping while being present” called inemuri comes in to play.

Employees in meetings, travelers on trains, and visitors to the public library will use free time on a train to get some sleep.

We’re talking beverages and foods to newspapers and smaller hygiene products. Some vending machines even sell used women’s underwear.

They first popped up around 1993, so many merchants argued against the deployment of these automated sales machines.

That didn’t stop their rapid expansion, and as of 2014, there’s about one vending machine for every 33 citizens.

A more hard-defined figure puts it at about 3.8 million vending machines spread throughout the country.

Mayonnaise found popularity in Japanese culture around 1925.

After living in the United States, Toichiro Nakashima thought eating mayo would make his native people grow taller like those in America.

He returned to Japan and established the Kewpie Corporation. Aside from adding more eggs, he added apple vinegar for additional sweetness.

You’ll find the stuff today in pasta, meats, sushi, pizza, and even cakes.

Many restaurants focus on the stuff that they even have themed menus.

After a major renovation, a Tokyo department store reopened in 1929 boasting of new aspects like AC, mail services, and attractive female elevator operators.

They would answer questions, control the elevator buttons, and prevent unnecessary door-closing accidents.

Today, elevator girls are out of fashion, with only four Japanese stores still employing these girls.

Foreigners have also noted that their high-pitched voices are obnoxious, but those voices effectively travel throughout a loud shopping environment.

Japan’s Inemuri practice goes back to about one thousand years.

The art is about preserving energy, so they nap after working hard diligently. Inemuri shows dedication to the job and all its responsibilities.

So even if an employee attends a meeting and falls asleep, they won’t be reprimanded, but may actually impress the boss.

Japan is a rail nation with millions of Japanese citizens and foreigners utilizing futuristic railroad cars daily.

They depend so much on transportation that when a train left 25 seconds too early in 2018, the company apologized for their inexcusable service.

Rush hour in Tokyo means trains, and subway lines are overcrowded.

CNN says that polite, white-gloved “oshiya” arrive to take care of the huge problem.

These “people pushers” will politely shove the few remaining passengers into the train. More oshiya arrive if one cannot handle the job.

America usually sells beer and soda in aluminum cans. In contrast, Japan fills its cans with almost any beverage.

But in a country where citizens are predisposed to “alcohol flush reaction,” an alcohol allergy, Japanese beer and alcohol companies chose to help the visually impaired read their product before drinking.

VinePair’s solution involved putting braille on top of the can.

Sadly, there is no uniformity standard so some companies will imprint “beer,” “alcohol,” or just a name-brand on top.

Braille does help the visually impaired, but does not effectively solve the problem 100%.

Modern traffic lights have red for stop, and green for go. But traffic lights in Japan are blue.

During the development of the Japanese language, there were only four colors that had words to describe them: black, white, red, and blue.

The word for “green” was added at a much later time.

So when traffic lights with green color were added to streets in the 1930s, citizens still used “blue” to describe them.

This resulted in a law passed in 1973 stating that the green color of traffic lights be “the bluest shade of green possible.”

Fruit from an American grocery store is cheap, fresh, and abundant, but in Japan, they are considered a delicacy.

Fruits on the island of the rising sun is expensive that even friends and family will split a piece instead of consuming one themselves.

Apples can cost $24, while designer watermelons, often raised in cube-like shapes, can go for $500 and up.

In 2016, a set of Yubari King melons sold at auction for an eye-watering $27,000.

Yes, fruits are unbelievably pricey, but the Japanese do cultivate their sweet products with care.

GPS makes it easy to find street names and house numbers in America. But in Japan, organization is lacking, and almost backward thinking.

Before the cities and towns could formalize a grid-like layout, the japanese created them in more independent manners.

House numbers on streets are age-derived, and not relative to their location. Older buildings will have smaller numbers while newer buildings have larger ones.

So building five might be between buildings 8 and 14.

Construction sites, tools, vehicles, personal, and barriers are unpleasing to the eye, but the area is “under construction,” so a little patience is required.

So the Japanese construction industry went ahead and flipped that last aesthetic on its head, making their construction barriers sweet, cute, and even whimsical.

Other countries have to deal with ugly, over-abundant orange and white cones and barrels.

This detail doesn’t help in the progress of a project, but it does break up the monotonous look of your typical construction projects.

Ōkunoshima island is found in the Inland Sea of Japan that people can access by ferry. It offers hiking trails, campsites, and several historical sites.

There are a large number of rabbits in the area, so the island is often called “Rabbit Island.”

These rabbits descend from their ancestors that were released after the island was developed as a park following World War II.

Of course, the rabbits are friendly and approachable.

Poachers are not allowed to hunt, while dogs and cats are also forbidden on the island.

Toilets in Japan are on a whole different level. They’re what you could call, “super toilets.”

Primarily established by the ToTo brand, Guinness World Records named the Japanese toilet, the world’s most sophisticated toilet.

Features rival modern cars. These include anal hygiene, bidet washing, seat warming, deodorization, health monitoring, self-cleaning, an automatic opening-closing lid.

It was in the 1980s when the sudden urge to build and demand such luxurious “thrones” began.

Japan’s young and elderly drivers are symbolized by unique magnets hanging on the back of their cars.

The “shoshinsha mark” is placed on the back of cars driven by young adults.

And then there’s the “koreisha mark”, given to drivers aged 75 and up.

There is another symbol for drivers that have a hard time hearing.

A yellow butterfly magnet shows those who have difficulty hearing horns, sirens, and other audible cues.

Pioneer Corp. spokesman, Hiromitsu Kimura, actually told the Wall Street Journal that “All of our ‘navi’ systems sold in Japan have a TV tuner function, but none sold outside Japan have it.”

That means drivers and passengers can watch live television while driving. This dangerous practice is allowed under two conditions.

Japanese drivers are more disciplined so a live tv won’t really distract them.

And then there’s Japanese traffic which is often slow and jammed.

It sounds strange to celebrate Christmas at KFC, but it is the most popular place to celebrate in Japan.

The story is that a manager at Japan’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken overheard some foreigners complaining that they could not get turkey during the holiday.

Only a small number of Japanese celebrate Christmas, but this manager still considered fried chicken an acceptable substitute for foreigners.

So the tradition stood the test of time after a trial thanks to their phenomenal marketing.

For Thanksgiving, orders are taken weeks in advance.

Most homes have limited space, so most Japanese families do not own clothes dryers. They hang their wet clothes in the shower and around the bathroom.

Their bathrooms have a fan setting designed to dry clothes, unlike our homes.

But the lack of home appliances doesn’t alter the clothing-cleaning process.

It’s a practice that requires you to spread out or hang wet clothing from the get-go, so delicates will avoid damage from high heat they would otherwise get in a dryer.

You won’t believe this but there’s… banana, blood orange, cantaloupe, fruit parfait, kiwifruit, mango, orange, peach, pear, pineapple, pumpkin, watermelon and salt, black chocolate, dark chocolate adult sweetness, and iced tea.

Then there’s royal milk tea, matcha almond berry, matcha green tea, rum raisin, tiramisu, caramel and salt, cookies and cream, honeycomb, red bean soup, bubblegum with blue chocolat.

Then you have cucumber, sweet corn, grilled corn, apple vinegar, ginger ale, hot Japanese Chili, rose, toasted soy, wasabi, pepper, soy sauce, soybean, and many other flavors.

It’s hard to prepare your car for a hot summer day but with a chance of rain.

Leaving your windows open to let the hot air out carries the risk of a downpour soaking your interior. But you won’t trade dry seats for a blisteringly hot car either.

In Japan, cars with rain protectors are common. Those “little car window roofs” help solve both issues of the scenario above.

The Naki Sumo Crying Baby Festival will have sumo wrestlers hold babies in an open-air, highly attended sumo ring.

The baby that first cries is declared the winner.

Japanese folklore states that a crying baby guards against evil spirits.

And if the crying is solid and boisterous, the baby is believed to grow up physically fit and healthy.

It’s a religious and culturally significant festival held on May 5th.

Godzilla, one of Japan’s most iconic figures, was designated a proud Japanese citizen in 2015.

The huge creature was 61 when they did so.

He was promoted to become the Shinjuku Ward’s tourism ambassador, right when he received his citizenship.

According to his cinematic history, Godzilla destroyed the city of Shinjuku thrice prior.

They came to a resolution that three times was enough, and as far as we know, the big ambassador is playing his role amicably.

In Japan, the tooth-crowding look, which gives a person the appearance of fangs, is called “yaeba.”

“In Japan, in fact, crooked teeth are actually endearing, and it shows that a girl is not perfect. And, in a way, men find that more approachable than someone who is too overly perfect,” says Vietnamese-American Michelle Phan.

Japanese women will pay qualified dentists to disarrange their teeth

Others go for plastic replicas that give the appearance of “double tooth.”

A book called “Looking into the Lives of Children” discusses Japanese education, stating that “The ultimate goal of Japanese education is to foster the student’s ability to become a fully integrated and productive member of Japanese society.”

At around the first grade, children are immersed in communal tasks.

Some may serve lunch, others help clean and keep their classrooms in order, while others clean toilets.

These tasks are meant to help develop children into future responsible citizens.

Kawaii, known as “cuteness,” is a culture in Japan. This refers to people, pets, animals, and items that are childlike, vulnerable, and often shy though still charming.

The two most recognizable examples of “Kawaii” are Hello Kitty and Pikachu.

Sugiyama Tomoyuki, author of Cool Japan, believes that this culture comes from Japan’s “all-loving” mindset.

Kurita Nobuyoshi, a sociology professor at Musashi University in Tokyo, thinks that the art of Kawaii is a magical term.

According to him, Kawaii is what is acceptable and desirable in the country.

In America, the practice of tipping encourages stellar customer service through financial incentives.

In Japanese culture, it is deeply ingrained at a young age that one take tremendous pride in their work.

Tips are not required to motivate workers financially or even encourage excellent customer service.

And besides, Japanese service industries pay their employees a livable wage right from the start.

You may find some US-based Japanese restaurants refusing the practice of tipping as well.

The Hikikomori are the loners or “modern-day hermits.”

Over half a million Japanese youths and more than half a million middle-aged adults are social recluses.

Hikikomori is a condition that makes a person isolate himself away from society and family for over six months.

Affected individuals will not work, attend school or leave their parents’ house. They prefer to spend time indoors, but others will go outdoors occasionally.

The Hikikomori will gradually withdraw from society.

In addition to being unhappy, they lose their friends, becoming insecure and quiet, and even talk less.

Bill Chappel of NPR had this to say regarding the seriousness of Japan’s railway punctuality.

” … even a small lapse in punctuality can be disruptive, in part because, as Casey Baseel reports for Sora News 24, some people in Japan synchronize their phones or watches to the time shown in train stations, so they’ll be sure to make their train… It stands to reason, then, that at least a few people would miss a train if it left 20 seconds earlier than usual, and even if there’s another coming in four minutes, adding four minutes to that leg of their commute might cause them to miss other transfers on the way to their destinations, with the effect snowballing enough that they end up being late for work or school.’”

Mr. Kanso is a restaurant chain in Japan. It’s “the largest canned foods bar in Japan,” as self-reported by their website.

Aside from developing their own can good products, diners that stop by can choose from over 300+ canned foods and snacks from all over the world to enjoy with their wine, sake, and beer.