What NOT to do in Japan 🇯🇵 WORST Etiquette Disaster

you seem to portray yourself as Mr Perfect when it comes to Japanese etiquette so tell us what's the worst thing you've ever done worst thing I've ever done nothing I'm Mr Perfect well except for that incident at the sushi restaurant and the highway told Ethan the awkward moment with Kim Watanabe all right I might have screwed up a few times but there's no shame in making mistakes if you learn from them regret is a slippery slope so today I'd like to share with you three terrible stories of the worst things I've done in my time living in Japan stories that I've never talked about one is a faux pas one's a serious language blunder and the other is just outright criminality but wrapped in each mistake there's a cultural lesson on what not to do in Japan or certainly what not to eat and we start with the story of how a language screw-up save me some money but also cost me my shame so the first mistake I made is unique because I didn't realize I'd made it until two months after it happened when I came to Japan I didn't know any Japanese apart from the basics like konnichiwa Arigato and um uh yeah all the basics I made every effort to learn while I was working at a school I'd sit at my desk between classes studying away like a maniac and at weekends I'd hop in my dilapidated Toyota and Venture off into the countryside to explore now on one such trip I wanted to drive to Nagano to see The Cheeky snow monkeys that I'd read so much about in Japan travel pamphlets and get the coveted bragging photos that my Facebook page so sorely deserved problem was the stay monkeys are about six or seven hours Drive South and when driving those kind of distances in Japan you have an important decision to make number one do you take the told highways and go bankrupt or number two drive on regular roads and spend a thousand years trapped behind a slow-moving k-car with highways the journey to the snow monkeys can be done in four hours without a solid eight so unfortunately I did go for option number one so off I went for four hours shooting down the bankruptcy highway to go and look at some monkeys sitting in some water and after a long drive praying that my rickety car wouldn't fall apart on Route I came to the highway toll booth to paying cash and you know drive off to my freedom but to my horror amidst the fatigue from driving I made a fatal error I accidentally drove into the wrong exit at Highway tolls in Japan you have two exits number one you pay with cash or number two you use an Etc card reader basically an NFC chip that you slot your credit card into that instantly pays when you arrive and you can sort of go through seamlessly you know this thing's brilliant it's like a magic and I didn't have one so I've driven into the wrong exit and as I go to reverse I look in the mirror and I see there's three or four cars filed up behind me waiting in the queue probably wondering what the hell's going on why isn't this idiot moving why isn't the [ __ ] barrier going up and as I poke my head out the window I'm sort of giving you know a half-assed apology like I'll see my son see myself against a backdrop of incessant honking for all the cars and I'm really starting to panic now because I feel utterly helpless I can't reverse I can't get through the barrier nobody seems to be bloody coming to help until eventually after a lifetime a man comes running over My Savior by all accounts and he's panicking just as much as I am panicking because this highway toll booth that normally runs like clockwork has just descended into this absolute cluster [ __ ] of a situation so he comes over running you know panting and he shouts out to me Genki desk are you okay and he presses the button and the barrier goes up the castle gates are finally open and I turned to him relieved and give a you know a resilient thumbs up like yeah Genki Genki this I'm good I'm okay thank you so much to which she points to the barrier and says this way please go that way and you know I'm so damn grateful I'm like thank you so much as I Full Throttle it drive through the raised barrier and down the off ramp away from the highway to Victory and amidst my relief at escaping I realized the man had let me off panic I haven't paid anything for this highway toll a few thousand yen you know what an incredible Twist of Good Fortune right now some people call this thing Gaijin smash literally Foreigner smash where you can break the rules and get away with doing [ __ ] like this which of course is something I don't want to Advocate um you know I've tried to make every effort to integrate here and play by the rules and you should too and when I got back to work on Monday I bragged to some colleagues that I'd gone away with it like this is stupid through my own Brazen stupidity but actually saved a few thousand yen and they were like oh it's a boy ah well done Chris said you're a genius and I was like of course I am I'm a king a champion of people and that was until two months later when it turned out that wasn't the case one day as I was sitting at my desk working through a new list of Japanese vocabulary I discovered to my absolute horror that the word for cash in Japanese is genking ganking oh God immediately I cast my mind back to the highway toll incident and relived that conversation when the man had come running over panting stress concerned he'd raised the tollbooth game pointed Beyond it to the side of the road for me to pull over and of course paying cash and said oh genking gank in this club are you paying cash but I looked at him with a smile and gone yeah Genki desk hit Full Throttle and [ __ ] off down the highway leaving him to stand in the exhaust beams of my dilapidated Toyota wondering probably why the bloody hell hadn't I paid why had I just disappeared off down the highway oh my God I realized it was less Gaijin smash more guys a [ __ ] my unrelenting stupidity had saved me a few thousand yen probably fifty dollars while not exactly portraying foreigners in the greatest light and probably shaking that man's confidence in all things foreign to absolve my sins I did donate that money that I owed to a local charity for the tohoku disaster relief fund but I think born out of that fear of becoming a petty foreign criminal that event did become like a catalyst for me to study Japanese really damn hard a lot quicker than I'd certainly initially planned so what's the moral of our first story number one don't go and see the snow monkeys number two don't make assumptions you've Gaijin smashed your way through when you absolutely have them but if you think that's bad get ready for our next big mistake involving a catastrophic meal at a high-end Tokyo Sushi restaurant that I quite honestly rather forget and speaking of big mistakes imagine traveling around Japan without protecting your online privacy or being able to watch your favorite TV shows because they're locked away in a different region well that is where today's 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following the link in the description box below at expressvpn.com forward slash abroad in Japan don't let annoying Regional internet get in your way watch whatever you want online and stay safe out there now I like sushi a lot I love The Buttery smooth flavors of the fatty tuna the oily texture of flame grilled salmon and I love devouring fish eggs and juicy fresh shrimp honestly probably eat sushi once or twice a month but what I don't do is eat out at high-end sushi restaurants not just because you have to sell your house to be able to afford it but because of a not so good experience that I had that scared me away forever once upon a time I had a meeting with a very important Japanese businessman uh quite a powerful guy this was a few years ago now back when it looked like they brought in Japan channel was going places not like now where I am of course a negative Nelly a whining William you are shallow-minded snowflake Englishman who is this plane as white bread as plain as white bread I [ __ ] love white bread stupid but unfortunately when these important powerful business people realize that abroad in Japan wasn't so much a slick production company as it was just me moping around on a floor that phase certainly didn't last very long however on this occasion I had a lunchtime appointment with someone who was very important now the thing about higher end sushi restaurants is you always sit at a bar counter right and the chef literally Towers over you putting the food down before you uh watching you eat with an unblinking gaze and that's my first problem with high-end sushi restaurants it feels less like fine dining and more like an interrogation and a war crimes Tribunal as you're probably aware in Japanese culture there's a real emphasis on showing appreciation for food and never being critical it's not like the UK where if the way to ask you you know how was your smoked salmon Wilder Berry souffle uh you are allowed to sort of go oh well you know this dish for lack of a better word was quite [ __ ] now in a Japanese restaurant providing it's not a chain restaurant if the restaurant staff asks oh how's the food even if it tastes like something out of a farmyard slop bucket you would still lie and say ah it's delicious it's a game changer I loved it it's my mine well yeah amazing otherwise it's considered uh quite rude and awkward and so when you go to a top class restaurant that atmosphere is magnified right because these are very proud chefs at the top of their game serving impossibly rare ingredients like the unobtainium of the fish world and when you go for an omakasea course literally Chef's decision to question their food and to question what they serve can feel like committing a crime so I want you to bear that in mind when I tell this story because in a bit you'll hear it and go oh I wonder why he didn't just say I don't want to eat that to the chef so it's midday and I go to this restaurant in Ginza high-end District in Tokyo and I go inside and it's really dark and dimly lit except for the wooden counter which is illuminated with the good old top down lighting that you find in sushi restaurants and I sit down and meet the guy who we'll call cytosa but he's like good see Chris I've ordered the unrelenting 45 [ __ ] dish or macca's air course and I'm like oh yes very good can't wait an eye up all the nice cuts of fish in the glass counter at the bar I already know I'm in a little bit of trouble because I'm not that adventurous when it comes to eating sushi but the chef asks is there anything you don't like I say no I'm good for everything just because I don't know what there is I've never eaten a high-end sushi restaurant before and in hindsight what I should have said is I'll eat anything as long as it's salmon so the course kicks off and it's pretty good we have some rich miso soup broth and one of the first courses is an assortment of buttery Rich fatty tuna and once each plate of sushi is crafted lovingly by the chef it's placed down before me for me to sort of look and go wow it's amazing better than Christ and I pop them in my mouth one by one and as I'm eating the sushi the chef who's this pretty big serious stern-looking middle-aged man just stands and watches in silence as I eat each piece one by one while he ominously clutches what can only be described as a bloody sword right like the knives they use to fill it these fish are pretty damn big it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings like Aragorn would be using and he's swinging it around uh I'm just like oh yeah delicious but I'm being studied by both him and Saito San to ensure that I appreciate these these culinary wonders which thankfully at this point I do because it's China and Everyone likes China now there's one important detail that I've left out until till now and that is that I'd been out drinking the night before so I might be a little bit hungover stomach isn't great but I'm relieved everything's got off to a good start and I can sort of feel my stomach go oh this is nice but I don't really want any food right now can you just sort of let me have a few hours off uh and I'm like no we've got to get through this we're all parties involved I've got to prove that I'm sophisticated I've got to prove that I'm not a wine in William the next piece is icka squid and I know it sounds daring but it's not it's a little bit translucent a little bit chewy but with a brush of soy sauce and a pinch of Wasabi it tastes great and I put it in my mouth and the chef asks oh it's delicious right and I'm like oh yeah but we see delicious and the chef's like of course it is of course it's delicious things start to go wrong because I witness a dish that I've never seen before that cytosan correctly identifies as mirugai or as it's known in English gooey duck a gigantic saltwater clam that's popular in China and Japan and genuinely looks like a prop out of the movie Alien also it pains me to admit it but for the longest time I thought gooey duck was pronounced geoduck because that's how it's bloody spell and thinking it was called geoduck always helped me through the process of eating it because it sounded like a Pokemon right I could look at this unpalatable just this horrible thing and go oh Geo duck HQ I'll eat it yeah oh no no it's called gooey duck gooey duck and if you learn just a single useful thing from this damn video it's how to pronounce the one dish you simply need to avoid but the chef sticks this gooey duck in front of me and he's like oh middle guy this and I'm like oh yeah it looks very bad um from the unnatural shape of it alone I know things are about to go downhill nevertheless italicum ass let's go my God I put it in my mouth and it tastes chewier than expired Wrigley's chewing gum like a flavorless lump of plastic dredged from the depths of the Dead Sea to my horror I start to feel like my mouth salivate you know when your mouth fills up with saliva because your body knows the bad thing's about to go down but of course the chef is standing there with his Lord of the Rings knife and he's like no I always see the show it's delicious and I'm like oh yes gooey duck it's amazing it's a game changer it's not it's [ __ ] luckily there was some piping hot green tea there and I thought maybe I can take a swig of that maybe I can wash the flavor out of my mouth or better still eradicate my taste buds out of existence and then just get through this but I took a swig of it and it made it a thousand times worse because now I've got the taste of the fishy chewing gum mess with the bitter green matcha tea no it doesn't work and it just made it worse somehow against the odds I swallow the gooey duck and keep my composure give a sort of a thumbs up to say to Sam and to the chef and they're like yep good stuff and move on while I'm like gagging however the chefs seem to take my approval of the gooey duck as a signal a signal to press ahead into the abyss of food because next up we get AKA guy Arc shell clam which again looks like a Facehugger from the movie Alien and the problem with akagai is in terms of flavor there's just no redeeming quality to this fish I don't understand why people eat this just looking at it alone I feel physically sick and I'm like I'll get through it I take it put it in my mouth all in one go and quickly realize what's left of the meal was now basically just an endurance test of my own mental strength now if you want to experience the taste of AKA guy at home in a reasonably priced environment uh cut up a Bridgestone tire drag it across a beach in the sand because not only does it have the texture of rubber but there's this horrible crunchiness to it when you bite in there's like bits of crunchiness like there's rock or sand or salt or something in there and of course the chef is like delicious right and I'm like Oh my delicious yeah kill me in between doing bloody breathing exercises just to get through this I swallow the damn thing whole and take a swig of what's left with my matcha green tea and by now my stomach's like all right you've had your thumb can you just like stop now and at this point I'm you know like a robber in a bank heist looking around for the door looking for the exit looking for where the toilet is just so I can run away and escape this this onslaught of awful but then the final dish comes out well I know I'm [ __ ] so Zai horned turban sea snail um placed before me in its shell and this isn't something you can just sort of reach down and pop in your mouth to get to the edible bit you need your chopsticks to fork in there and twist it and pull it and Bop It And if you ever get to this moment um with your chopsticks pincered around this rubbery snail that you have to tug out of the shell that's the moment of realization of just how stuffed you really are I twist it out and I think at this point my hand must have been shaking because I know with this in my mouth this is the final blow there's no turning back I pop it in start to chew and I do that thing you know when you tap your foot and you're like because my legs are like one step ahead they know it's time to time to escape and the chef's like oh you see this okay it's delicious right and I'm like nodding away as I feel my mouth flood with saliva and then I'm like I just need to just see the toilet and the chef looks thoroughly unimpressed because it's a bit rude to leave the counter while you're still chilling this award-winning dish but I slip away to the toilet and what goes down in there is best left to the imagination but the worst part of it is the toilet was so close to the counter the everything that transpired within that toilet in that five minute window would have been audible to the chef to cytosan and to the other occupants of the restroom oh God just thinking about it makes me cringe and want to die this was something that was abundantly clear when I returned to the counter to cytosan's concerned face and him sort of going oh die Jordan are you okay and the stony-faced chef still clutching his knife suffice to say we hastily ordered the bill and I never saw the restaurant nor cytosan ever again after we parted ways so what is the moral of the story what's the mistake well I think there's three things here number one uh do your homework and learn all the foods that you don't want at a sushi restaurant maybe it's sea snails maybe it's shellfish and facehuggers and gooey duck um but if it doesn't come out it's not an issue right so don't be bold like me just say no number two avoid high-end sushi restaurants with the bar counter unless you really love sushi and want that experience but I personally don't like the bar counter having them stare there not fun and number three the most important lesson of all don't consume sushi on a hangover don't don't ever do that the third and final story is probably the most embarrassing for me not because it involves a mistake um it's just it's just more of an admission of guilt and A Life Lesson that's I think Universal across the board just over a year ago I was very lucky to spend a week with Japan's biggest movie star Kim Watanabe good God nice to meet you nice to meet you yeah and from The Last Samurai and Inception to Godzilla and Tokyo Vice he's an incredible actor and for the best part of a decade I joked on here that the day I met him the day I sat down and had a coffee with him would be the day I would leave Japan because I would have completed Japan I would have done everything there is to do and then rather awkwardly it happened and yeah it went pretty pretty damn well now first off you don't mess with Ken Watanabe there's a reason he's cast as a samurai warlord or a Japanese billionaire who wants to steal things he's a scary man so much so that when you tell him that you find him scary he makes you feel even more scared pretty nervous it's pretty Skip it's scary why I'm scared to meet you Ken why why are you afraid I mean I've run into some views of uh the abroad Japan channel before uh you see nervous to encounter me for whatever reason and when they go oh you know I'm a bit anxious to meet you Chris I don't go why why are you afraid although I definitely will do that from now on I met Ken a few hours before we started shooting the documentary in his Cafe the K port in the town of kessanuma and for my first meeting with Kenny Cayman he said hello to everyone and he signed some photos for some waiting fans and then he came over and just pretty much sat down next to me and said Hello nice to meet you let's have some pizza and it was very surreal I was in this like dreamlike State I basically felt like I was in [ __ ] Inception not just because I was a bit sort of shocked to be in the presence of Kim Watanabe all of a sudden but mainly because satra's my anxiety in the run-up to shooting the documentary the night before I had had you know give or take a four minute sleep so I was pretty dead now when you have that initial small talk with someone in Japan called ice had to greetings it does often follow a similar structure or pattern especially if you're not Japanese questions include why did you come to Japan what do you you do how old are you and how long have you been living here right this small talk has to happen not because conversation in Japan is boring but because it's important to establish your position in the hierarchy like you know establishing the Senpai core High relationship in simple terms and if you're older you're instantly the winner so well done you've won that hierarchy For Better or Worse but the second most important question perhaps is uh how long have you lived in Japan and they asked that because they want to know how good is your Japanese like how good should they expect your Japanese to be naturally if you say you know I've been here a year or two or three there's an expectation that you're Japanese is appalling and you're given some room to maneuver when you've lived here 10 years naturally the bar is a little bit higher rightly say which presents a problem for me because in many ways my Japanese isn't that good in fact it's probably worse now than it was five or six years ago Marie behind back to the Great Highway Tollbooth robbery Genki desk that event was the Catalyst for me studying Japanese really hard and I did go all out morning day night I studied kanji I studied grammar vocabulary to the point that in two years I was able to be kind of conversationally fluent and even win a Japanese speech contest memorizing an entire 15-minute speech word for word and delivering it to an audience of 100 people something I never thought I would ever be able to do and a testament to how Bloody hard I worked on my Japanese at the time but two years in it was incredibly rewarding speaking with students and staff and friends and everybody was really impressed how far I'd managed to go within two years including me right I felt immensely proud when people asked how long have you lived in Japan and I could be like oh you know two years and then be like whoa nihongo Jaws are genuinely that's pretty good and if I'd carried on at that pace I would be extremely good at Japanese probably able to speak at a native speaker level it would be magical but then I stopped I quit my job as a teacher I left a work environment where I use Japanese all day every day and I threw my eggs in the YouTuber basket where unfortunately Japanese isn't really needed in everyday life and thus my Japanese never progressed like my rusting Toyota starler dilapidated and crumbling away on a driveway so too did my Japanese abilities sure I can still hold a conversation and get by but there is a disappointing Gulf between where my Japanese is and where it should be and where it could be and with each and every passing year when people ask how long I've lived in Japan that bragging and that Pride that I once had has crumbled away into embarrassment to the point that six or seven years in I'm ashamed to admit I started to conveniently forget how long that I'd lived in Japan people ask Chris San how long have you lived here in Japan and I'd be like oh I don't know maybe three maybe four years I've forgot now it's gone awful it's awful I know and I imagine some of these people are confused when they look up a broad Japan or Wikipedia and discover that I've been here since 2012. like wow that a broad Japan guy is sure [ __ ] at maths I did it because I'm ashamed I'm ashamed and I wanted to make sure that the Japanese person I'm speaking with doesn't assume that I'm really good at Japanese and go on to use Advanced vocabulary that I won't be able to follow or keep up with so you know there's method to the madness so when Ken Watanabe and I are sitting there eating a pizza his favorite mushroom and asparagus pizza with his homemade spicy sauce he's like Chris sand how many years have you lived in Japan and I was like [ __ ] I can't lie to Ken Watanabe oh but then if I say 10 years maybe he'll assume I'm very good and all of our interview will be in Japanese to the detriment to the documentary it could compromise the dynamic so I did say well Ken I think ah you know I think there must have been a five maybe six years now yeah I forget it must be five or six and he sort of looked a bit puzzled that I myself didn't know how long I'd physically been in Japan and he gave her sort of right yeah uh nod before going on to munching on his pizza fast forward to the next evening and we just wrapped our first day of shooting it's gone pretty well and for the most part Ken and I speak in English but when he's answering heavy-hitting interview questions he does gravitate towards Japanese so he can express himself fully but we're sitting at a restaurant and having a dinner with all the movers and shakers of Casanova town and the atmosphere felt more like a king returning from a battle uh holding a court as opposed to a mere dinner but it was a lot of fun and one of the main people I got speaking to was the owner of the local sake Brewery a really nice guy called sugawarasan but sugawarasan spoke good English and he came over and after a minute or so he was inevitably like oh so Chris Sam how many years have you been living here in Japan and before I delivered my answer I did my usual conveniently forgetting how long I've been here thing I went oh you know oh oh how long uh or five all right but before I could deliver my answer from the other side of the room filled with people in this noisy restaurant I heard the Deep booming terrifying voice of kematanabe say June Khan ten years he's lived here 10 years it's okay you can speak Japanese and I look over and he gives me a knowing look a look that I'd seen in The Last Samurai when he chopped off that guy's head or Inception when he finds out that Leonardo DiCaprio screwed him over I've been caught in the Hat I don't know how he found out how long I'd lived in Japan I didn't know how he'd got through my lights but with my face gone bright red like a [ __ ] strawberry I gave a sort of sheepish nod as if to sort of acknowledge like oh yeah I've been rumbled I've been done and then went back to speaking to sugawarasan this time in Japanese I've been found out and for the rest of the week off camera Ken did speak to me more or less exclusively in Japanese thankfully it did go on to become one of the better documentaries I've been lucky to produce on a broad Japan but what's the moral of the story here I think the moral is don't give up learning Japanese like I did honestly that might be one of the few regrets I've had in all my time living here I should have carried on even if it was in some small way I should have carried on my studies and number two most importantly of all don't lie to Ken Watanabe because he'll find out some way or another and then you'll get to see the scary face so guys what was the worst mistake of the three let me know in the description box below and I do actually have a book coming out revealing more horrendous stories like this of my Times living in Japan you can find the details in the description box below but it's available for pre-order now more on that in a future video and of course for more behind the scenes content check out the abroad Japan patreons over 50 bonus videos on there you can check out right now but for now guys as always many thanks for watching the abroad Japan Channel and I'll see you right back here to do it next time I'm off for some geoduck sorry gooey duck yeah Genki deaths

Channel: Abroad in Japan

Views: 1,366,002

Keywords: what not to do japan, japanese etiquette, abroad in japan, chris abroad, trash taste

Id: bx3gFfYDsYg

Length: 29min 20sec (1760 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023