After spending close to a month in the country, I’m starting to recognize the importance Japan places on balancing opposing forces. There is a sense of balance to many aspects of Japanese culture and life—balance between modern and historical, balance between city and nature, balance between the individual and the society.
The gate at the University of Tokyo is a perfect example of the traditional mixing effortlessly into the modern city aesthetic.
Even seemingly simple things, like a delicious ice cream parfait, are balanced by their opposing equal (e.g. a pot of hot tea).
A hot cup of oolong tea to balance out the cold creamy-ness of a wonderful ice cream parfait.
It’s interesting noticing how the society reacts to things that shift their sense of balance. Because Japan has limited space, they don’t have the luxury of having ample land for landfills. Instead, they prioritize efficiency and organization in their trash system, to create balance between their waste and their creation.
A diagram from the trash plant we visited detailing how the plant works throughout the incineration process.
At the trash plant we visited, the operators talked about how the ash created from the incineration process is recycled into concrete to be used later. They’ve created a way to balance the lack of space with their organization of trash into something that reduces, reuses, and recycles efficiently and effectively.
Even small aspects of life, like food, take balance into account in their execution. I’m used to simple, monotonous meals within the US: a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, a salad for dinner, etc. In Japan, the meals are all about variety. Breakfast alone has rice and miso soup and fish and pickled vegetables. A simple take-out bento box for lunch has two different kinds of meat, three kinds of pickled vegetables, and seasoned rice. The meals balance all aspects of a healthy, rounded diet into small, controllable portions, something that is not inherent to the US culture.
A traditional breakfast in Japan, featuring miso soup, grilled fish, rice, and pickled vegetables.
Socially, it’s been fun seeing how the Japanese people react to this call for balance. The culture emphasizes a quietness in almost everything, from empty shrine entrances to crowded metro trains. But enter an izakaya or karaoke and be prepared for the quiet, demure salary woman from the train to start yelling excitedly with her friends.
A place where you would be expected to be quieter.
The bustling streets of Akihabara, where you might let loose at night after a long day.
In America, being loud in public is unsurprising and sometimes even expected—we seek balance by trying to find quiet places. Here, in Japan, the priorities are flipped. A quiet, internal strength is favored, leaving the nights and weekends as an opportunity to find balance by getting a little loud and crazy.
Overall, I’ve loved every moment in Japan because of all the new things I’ve learned and observed. This inherent sense of balance within Japanese culture is something that I would love to take with me back to the US. Maybe it’ll be in how I hold myself in crowded spaces, or how I look at my meals. Either way, I know that I’ll be examining my own culture from a completely new perspective and I’m excited to see where that takes me.