Explore everyday life in Japan
After we bought our first car in Japan, my wife started buying canisters of gum and keeping them in the molded cup holder of the driver’s side door. When I first opened one of these canisters, I was surprised to find a sheaf of miniature Post-it Notes inside. Why would anybody put Post-it Notes inside of a gum container, I thought to myself. But, this being Japan, I just assumed that the Post-it Notes were some kind of appreciation gift, a thank-you present from the company to its customers. It never occurred to me that these Post-it Note-like papers might have another use, one that goes beyond marking book pages and holding written notes.
It wasn’t until two years after we had bought the car that I found out the real purpose of these papers. I was driving north to Oga-Hantou, a beautiful peninsula deep in the countryside of Akita Prefecture. My wife’s father was sitting beside me in the passenger seat. He was drinking a shochu cocktail, watching the summer Olympics on the small TV in my car’s dashboard, and chewing gum (Yes, in Japan, it is legal for passengers to drink alcohol in moving cars.). When my father-in-law got tired of his gum’s taste, he reached down, pulled out his own canister of gum from the bag he had resting between his feet, took out the sheaf of Post-it Notes that was inside, peeled one of them off, stuck his gum to it, folded it over, and put it in the garbage can that is velcroed to the floor of my car.
Oooohhh! I thought as I watched him do this out of the corner of my eye. So that’s what those papers are for.
And then I thought, How did I never realize this before?
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.