 That's my name. All right. She's the host of Food and Farmer, so what are you doing here today on a given Tuesday? She's going to talk about Japan and her trip to Japan. We want to know more about that. Yeah. It's not Think Tech Hawaii today. It's Think Tech Asia. There you go. Think Tech Asia. Here we are. It's so nice of you to come down and tell us about your trip. Thank you for inviting me. I know it's our show's going to be a little bit different today than what I used to talking about food and farmers. It's all right. I'm curious to see where you lead me, Jay. Well, I may ask you about your perception of things in Japan when it comes to, you know, I'm going to tell you a short story. When I arrived in these islands, October 1st, 1965, before your mother was born, my boss, as soon as I walked in the door, my boss said to me, you can't possibly live here and understand Hawaii until you go to Japan, because Japan is the sort of the cultural source for so much in Hawaii. How can you not go? And he ordered me to go and do nothing but travel around in Japan, which I was happy to do. Yeah, sure. And one of the things I noticed, I stayed at Tachikawa Air Force Base, which is near Tokyo. One of the things I noticed is that there were a lot of agriculture in that neighborhood, but they were using human nutrients for the agriculture. This was 1965. It was 20 years after the war, so things were different. Before environmental regulation. Before anything. So you went, and you went recently, and so you're fresh back, then we want to know everything. We want to know the gestalt of your trip, as nobody has ever seen Japan, Stephanie. Oh my gosh, you're building this up so much. An American lady goes to Japan. Yes. The first thing is why? Well, ultimately, the reason I went was because Air Asia was offering these super cheap fares to Osaka. And to be honest, the price kind of excluded me from traveling. We know Hawaii's really expensive, right? Even doing a staycation can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. And so the idea of traveling to a foreign country and spending that amount of money plus an extra thousand dollars for airfare seemed insane, especially as a single woman living here in Hawaii. And then I got a round trip flight for $200. So even if the food is expensive or accommodation, I'm like, $200 you can eat. How can you say no? Yeah, it's like a flight to Hilo sometimes, you know? So nine hour trip there, and I was like, of course, I just have to go because this price is so cheap. It's really a great bargain. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so you go. You decide you go. Need a visa? No visa. You get a visa there as an American citizen. It's very simple. I'm laughing because whenever you're doing a visa or a border run, I always have some nerves of like, oh, the agents are going to be like, no, you're denied entry, especially when you get a visa on site, right? You're like, I'm here. Please let me enter. And they give you a nice little stamp, and they're like, enjoy. And it was so simple. It was harder to get back into the United States than it was to get a visa. Okay, that's point number one on the exam. It was harder to get back into the United States than it was to get into Japan in the first place. What has changed in our lives? Feeling patriotic today, the day before July 4th? Of course. I have to feel patriotic on July 4th. I think traveling the world sometimes can make you either feel super patriotic or it can make you feel that maybe our country can take lessons and ideas from other cultures and apply it to ourselves as well. So there's a tipping point there. So which way do you tip after this trip? I'm not a politician. I feel like I don't have all these diplomatic answers. I would say I encourage everyone to travel internationally as much as possible, because ultimately the exchange of ideas is going to help everyone's society in the long term. Yes. Yes, you have to go. You have to see. You have to make the comparison. You have to bring back cultural arbitrage and that's the value of it. It's not just personal education. Right. You're an emissary. You're a citizen diplomat. When you go, you bring America, whatever it is, with the slings and arrows. And when you come back, you bring the benefit of having seen things that maybe you like more. Right. And when I travel, especially as an American, I've been very fortunate in my life to travel to Europe and travel to, I used to live in Southeast Asia. And they don't get to meet a lot of Americans that they may necessarily like. As a general stereotype, we tend to be louder, a little bit like a lot of bravado. So as a single, solo American female traveling, I kind of give them a different perspective of America. Maybe not all this male bravado and we're number one type thing in the world. And they get to see, you know, that there are so many Americans out there who want to learn about other cultures. And we hope that other people can visit us as well. Yeah. Yeah. You look at it, I hate to talk about age, but you look at it from the point of view of a millennial. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Okay. It's all right to be a millennial. Yeah. I feel like a millennial when it's said by someone of an older generation is usually a derogatory term, are you millennials and your avocado toast, all that crazy stuff. So I see it as, you know, millennials are just the next generation showing how we can move forward in the future. Yeah. I'm one, too. A state of mind. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So you go there and you're a single lady traveling alone. This is interesting. So you have to have a kind of mental framework to deal with that. So what is your, you know, what is your state of mind as you go through a foreign country that you haven't been to before as a single lady? You see that, you know, there's someone intimidating, I suppose, but maybe not in Japan, eh? Yeah. So again, I've been really fortunate. I'm an only child. So I cite, I'm usually traveling alone as a child, just getting these to the world. And so traveling alone doesn't scare me. I have enough street smarts to be like, let's not throw a thousand, have a thousand dollars in my hand and walk down the street type thing. So but there is always that mindset. But even here living in Hawaii or even on mainland US, as a woman, you are carrying your keys in between your hands. You're wary of men on the street at night. So going to Japan, it wasn't really going to be that any different because I already deal with that on a day-to-day basis. But then when I got to Japan, I was, it is the safest country I've ever been to in my entire life. I've been to 20 countries and I've lived in the US most of my life. And I felt safer there even walking out at 3 a.m. by myself than I ever have anywhere else in the world. And it was, it was a really nice feeling because for me, I had this moment of like, is this what every man feels like when they walk down the street of like, yeah, I can just walk down and no one's going to cat-call me or bother me or try, you know, anything like that. And Japan's super safe. Their police officers don't even have guns. Like they're just walking around weaponless and it blew my mind that you can have such a respect for authority in that sense that your police officers don't even have guns and people will still follow laws. Yeah. Nice. That's a great realization in Japan. And then people are friendly, they're cooperative, they're courteous to a fault. They take care of you. They want to welcome you, all of them, all the time. Right? Yeah. Yeah, usually I feel like here in America, like when you go visit someone, you like argue about like, no, I got dinner, no, you, no, no, I'll pay. And I tried to do that in Japan and it was seen as an insult, like how dare you offer to pay your visitor in my country because of that culture of hospitality, right? Like you've come to Japan, we want to share this experience with you. We don't want you to be like tied down by finances like, here's sake, try some sushi, let's go here. And I'm like, please, can I give you like $5? They're like, no. And I was, you know, we always talk about in, especially in Hawaii tourism, that sense of aloha and hospitality, right? And it was really nice to go to Japan, like you said, one of the cultural sources of local culture here and see that same sort of aloha or hospitality shown as well. Yeah, lovely. Okay. You took some pictures. We took some pictures. 27 pictures. Well, actually lots more than that. Well, I really took like 4,000 photos. 4,000 pictures. So when you gave me the mandate of 10 photos, that was quite a large endeavor. And I was like... So you stuck in 27. Yeah. So, yeah. So I thought maybe I could give a little bit of background of where I traveled first since the pictures are just kind of miscellaneous. So I flew into Osaka and I stayed there for a couple of days just to acclimate and like get used to the culture there. And then I went to Kyoto. Then I went all the way north to Morioka to visit my Japanese friend, Mami, who's my best friend. I've known her for five years. And she and I always traveled together. We went backpacking together. And then I came back to Tokyo, back to Kyoto, back to Osaka. So I basically went all the way north and then came back all the way south. What a trip. Wow. You saw it. How long were you away? A couple of weeks, backpacking the whole time. But really what made it possible to see all that stuff in two and a half weeks was their amazing infrastructure in terms of rail. So they have the Shinkansen, the bullet train, which is a high speed rail, right? Which rail is a huge discussion here that we have at Think Tech Hawaii about the finances and all the applicability of it here in Hawaii. But in Japan, with the whole country's network of infrastructure, that's maintained really well, it makes it possible for people to travel within the country without breaking the bank. Yeah. How about hotels? Did you stay at Japanese Inns or those little pods they had? I stayed in the little pods. What do you call them? They're called capsule dorms. We have a photo here, actually. And it may look like a coffin. The first one I got in, I was like, oh no, because I do have a little bit of claustrophobia. You know, when I get in elevators, I am slightly aware of the space. But because Japan was such a sensory overload for me, you know, language, food, just different people's personalities and stuff like that, it was really nice to come back to a little cave that's dark in your own space. And the interesting thing I found about Japanese dorms, which are not true for any other dorms I've ever been to in my life, is that there's no talking. So usually, you know, in a German dorm or if you go to a dorm in Thailand, everyone's on their bunk beds. They're like, oh hey Jay, where are you going? Where are you from? Like, what do you do? And that's how you make friends and you make those connections. But in Japan, it's no talking. There's signs everywhere, no talking. And this was in every single dorm I went to throughout the country. And I made the cultural faux pas of one time talking on my phone for five minutes at 11 a.m. And they were like, shh. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I figured, you know, 11 a.m., everyone's fine, but I was like, oh, it's a cultural thing of no speaking at all. And I think the idea is that because the cities are so dense and crowded and you don't really have that space of your own, really, that when you do have this small capsule dorm, this is your space and you're not going to let anyone impede on that, either by sound or just coming into your space as well. Oh, that's a lovely idea. Isn't it? A little peaceful quiet. Like, okay, it may be small, but at least it's mine and no one can touch it and reach it. And we're touching so much on the photos. Let's start going through them, all right? Okay, yeah. So tell us about each photo of what we would not be able to guess. Okay. All right. Maybe, Ray, could you pull up any photo you like? Okay. So here I am in Morioka. I'm with my best friend, Mommy. She really helped make my trip a delight because she connected me with so many local experiences. And we're here eating yakitori. So we have that here as well. Basically, skewers of meat, every type of meat. I had intestines. She called it chicken butt, which I thought was adorable. We just ate basically everything. Any sort of meat product you could get from chicken to cattle, anything like that we ate. That was good. It was so good. As you can see in this photo, I'm the only foreigner there, which just is so nice because no one treated me like a foreigner. They were nice to me, but they weren't like, oh, like, where are you from? And they just let Mommy and I have a really nice night out. Yeah, lovely. Yeah. Okay. What's next? So this is Mommy. So I want to tell, I want to tell a quick story about her. I met her in a dorm in Thailand five years ago. And through the magic or power of social media, we've been able to keep in touch. She visits me here in Hawaii. We backpack around. And so I had the chance to see her in Japan in her home country. And the reason I wanted to highlight her was because she literally lit up a network of friends around the country to be like, my friend, Stephanie's in town. Go take her for sushi. Or like, oh, my friend, Stephanie's in Kyoto. You gave the way for you. Yeah. She really helped. And so, you know, those international friendships we're talking about, like not only can help our society, but on an individual level, like, I don't think my trip would have been as amazing if it weren't for her and like the hospitality that she showed. Yeah. And you'll see them again. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Prepare for visitors. Yeah, really. Oh, this is a, so in Osaka, just outside Osaka, there is the Instant Ramen Museum. And they show you the first cup of noodles ever made to like all the different varieties. And here the photo we're looking at, it looks like a bar, right? It looks like a salad bar. You make your own cup of noodles. So I'm making my own cup of noodles here. You get to choose your broth. These are all different. You have egg toppings, garlic chips, shrimp, and you get to choose toppings and make your own cup of noodles. And that was, you know, everyone else was like, what a nerd. But I grew up on instant noodles. And so that was just like so nostalgic and so neat at the same time. Yeah. Great. Okay, what do we got? Oh, I'm going to have food. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I grew up on instant ramen, but I also grew up on pickles. I am a pickle fiend. And this is a market in Kyoto called Nishiki Market. And it's just a really long alleyway of just these mom and pop stores. And they were famous for their pickles. So these are literally all pickles. Everything you see in this photo, you have pickled asparagus, gourds, radishes, you know, daikon. And I was just like, what? So I had pickled eggplant, which was my favorite. And I brought some home so I can eat it as well. Yeah. So just these little moments. Oh, gosh. Oh, it's all about food. I think our producer likes food as do I. So this was my absolute favorite thing I ate in Japan. It's cherry blossom ice cream. So you know the famous cherry blossoms that everyone goes to Japan to see? They've just utilized that and made it into an ice cream. It's actual cherry blossoms. It's actual cherry blossoms. It was, I was like, this is going to taste like flowers, right? Like it's going to taste really fake, and it was amazing. And I wanted to get a second one, but I was like, I think one ice cream cone is enough. But that was my favorite thing. It tastes like a cherry taste? No. It just was like, wow. I wish I were a flower. It was just like this very light kind of spring taste. Not too sweet. Yeah. And it didn't taste like a fake flowery. I thought it was going to be like perfumey a little bit, but it was so light and nice. Yeah, that would justify the whole trip for me. Ice cream. What else? Okay, before and after, maybe? So in Tokyo, you have Shibuya Crossing. It's a really famous crossing for tourists to see. And the reason is this is the most popular or populist intersection in the world. Three million people a day traverse this intersection. So right here, I'm showing just a general photo of what it looks like when people aren't crossing. And maybe if we could pull up the video of showing the people crossing in Shibuya. So this isn't even at rush hour or anything. And three million people a day. All day long. Yeah, so I titled it one of the greatest animal migrations in the world. We think wildebeest on the savannah, but we also have human migrations as well. And so Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo is one of those places. You want to ask Stephanie a question? Call in 808-374-2014. Hard questions are permitted. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing about it is that this country side as well as cities. And I wonder if you got out into the country and saw the beautiful scenes that exist in Japan. Mount Fuji, for example. I didn't go to Mount Fuji because I couldn't drive there. But I did go hiking with my friend mommy up north. So imagine where Tokyo is if you take a bullet train three hours north of that. So I'm really far north up in Sendai. And we went hiking at Mount Akira. I can't remember the name. I could look at that. Como Fugate or something like that. But it's basically volcanic. It almost looks like Iceland, right? You have this black volcanic soil. You have, I think your phone's going off. They have snow and bamboo. And it was just amazing. And there's some scenes where a bunch of snow and fog. It looks something of a nature documentary. And living at sea level, I have acclimated to sea level. And we were maybe, we weren't that high, maybe 1,000 meters. And I was just starting to be like, I am so out of shape. I can't really hike anymore. And she's like, what's wrong with you? You're fat. And I'm like, no. Something's wrong. And then I was like, I feel like I can't really breathe. The acclimation thing. Yeah. I was starting to get a little bit of altitude sickness. Japan has been through some natural disasters. The tidal waves. And of course, the whole Fukushima business. Did you worry about that? Did you talk to people about it? What was the sense of vulnerability to things like that? Well, I wouldn't say there is like an air of vulnerability. You would see tsunami signs. You know, this is a tsunami evacuation area. And actually, I left in the next day. They had a 6.2 earthquake in Osaka. Oh, wow. It was because you had departed. It was. Yeah. It was upset. But unfortunately, you know, even this earthquake, it unfortunately killed three people. And that was mostly due to like walls falling on them and stuff like that. But the biggest besides their unfortunate passing was the train stations. How do you deal with people on trains during an earthquake, right? But there wasn't a sense of impending doom all the time. And living here in Hawaii, we went through like a false nuclear alarm. So it doesn't really matter where you are. Like a natural disaster or a man-made disaster can really happen anywhere. Yeah, true. And speaking of which, did you talk to people about North Korea? Because it was only a few weeks earlier that North Korea was a real threat. I didn't feel comfortable talking to people about that. But I wish I had brought this picture. There were a lot of newspapers with Kim Jong-un's face everywhere. This was before the meeting or after the meeting with Kim Jong-un. Both. And so I was like, you know, even though I can't read Japanese, I wonder what they're talking about in their newspapers. I didn't feel comfortable personally on a personal level because like I said, I am not a politician. I'm not a diplomat, anything like that. This means you should probably run for office, Stephanie. Because I say I'm not a politician? Oh, okay. And you know, America doesn't have the greatest PR right now. And so I didn't feel comfortable trying to challenge that outwardly. I'd rather my actions and my kindness show a different way that you know, Americans, we are good people. The kind and gentle America. Yeah. As opposed to like, we're awesome, we're nice. You should listen to me, you know, like, let your actions speak for themselves. Did they speak to you about their views of Trump and Kim Jong-un and what happened? The American change? Yeah. So a quick backstory. I went to Switzerland when George W. Bush. I was like 14 or 15 when George W. Bush got elected. And I remember my dad and I were on the streets one time and there was like these drunk revelers in Switzerland and they started berating us because we were American and we're idiots and whatever. That's when you tell them you're Canadian. Yeah, right? And so, you know, I was Japanese people. I knew we're super nice. I knew no one was going to do that. And I fully expected more playful teasing about it and I only got it once. Just like, hmm, just like, we know who your president is and that was all. And I think that's just because they're kind and they also recognize that I don't have control over international policy, right? Right. They saw me. I had the same experience in Iceland a few weeks ago. Oh, yeah? Because I wanted to find out what people were thinking about Trump and all that. And they really wouldn't tell me. What I got was this kind of shrug the shoulder kind of reaction, you know, we're sorry for you but we're not going to talk about it. Exactly. Because they recognize that, you know, we want to be progressive, right? And we want to continue to move forward and that you alone, Jay, cannot control all of international policy and domestic policy. Right. Right. So. Let's go back in pictures. Okay. What do we got now? Yeah. So this is me in Shinjuku in Tokyo. Some of the nightlife. Just all the crazy neon lights. Before I went, I thought it was like one alley. Like I just thought it was like one street. You know? And then I was like, oh, this whole neighborhood is lit up. So this isn't even like a main street. This is like a side street. And I was just, I just, I kept imagining energy bills. Like, you know, in Hawaii we could never really have this. One because of like light pollution and stuff but also just the amount of energy or the price it would cause to light those would be insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See it in other places in Asia. Yeah. For example, China. Yeah. What else? What's behind us actually is like a garden I went to. It was amazing. It was this temple in Kyoto and it was raining. And so that's why you see no people in the photo because when it rains, people don't want to go outside. And that's when I donned my rain jacket. I'm like, I'm going out and getting some photos of these picturesque places including this scene in Kyoto. So these are two girls who are wearing kimono and they're actually doing a photo shoot right now. There's so many teenage Japanese girls who did this but it made for lovely photos for themselves but for myself as well. So if you just stay on one spot usually you'll catch a great photo kind of like this. They're so picturesque. The shades, the colors, in this case the kimono. What about the language? Were you able to understand everybody speak English? A lot of people would speak English or they would do like miming. I never expected anyone to speak English so I learned some key words. Just like excuse me, like sumimasen, like sorry if you just like nod and say that. I like the way you did that. It takes you really far. I think one of the most unique phrases I learned was so Japanese like customer service in stores they wrap everything like seven, eight times. And here in Hawaii in the mainland we're trying to go towards reusable bags, right? So like to go to this culture which is also an island you're like oh surely they'll be like more progressive I guess with like this homogenous culture and then no let's put it in paper and plastic and another plastic and bag that's taped and I was like I'm at 7-eleven buying a drink so I just learned like sonomama which means like as it is like so they would just give you the drink as opposed to wrapping it. They're willing to do that. Yeah and when I would say it they would think I was fluent and they'd be like blah blah blah like started talking and I'm like you know deer in the headlights like and then they're like here you go. So did you see you know living in Hawaii you see threads little pieces of Japanese culture all over were there things there in Japan that did you find you know the root of the culture? Yeah absolutely I think so you know I've worked in the tourism sector here and I never like Japanese tourists are super nice but never really like fully understood them you know all the like bowing and all that kind of stuff like that and then traveling there I was like oh this makes so much sense so like for example here in Hawaii you'll go hiking and you'll see these like beautiful Japanese women all dolled up with their high heels and you're like why are they like what are you doing right? Meanwhile you're muddy and you have hiking boots on and then when I went there a lot of like of their more popular hikes are paved so you can like look a little bit nicer and I was like oh that makes sense in that way but a lot of the food like mochi ice cream ramen and it's in saimin as well and it was like oh okay okay I start to get it and there was one point I was getting a little nostalgic that there's actually an eggs and things in Kyoto so I went to eggs and things and just had like Kona coffee and like eggs Benedict and it was so nice That's another really big question when I ask you you know American influences it must be ubiquitous in Japan you must see McDonald's on every street corner did you feel that there was a big American presence? In terms of those chain stores yes but not so much to like America of it and I have to admit that like Starbucks and 7-Eleven really like saved me you know when you travel and you just get weary and you're dehydrated sometimes you just want a place that you feel like safe and you understand the routine right and a lot of so for example in Starbucks they have bathrooms for guests that doesn't exist in most other places in Japan so I could always count on like oh if I've been walking for miles if I find a Starbucks I'm okay right and they also have 7-Eleven so you know I really don't feel like spending $15 on a full meal let me go get like a rice ball at 7-Eleven and they had some others they had this convenience store called like Lawson Station and it's like from Ohio I've never even heard of it it was like what like what is this it's just like it was just like 7-Eleven but like teenage boys loved it for some reason with loiter outside all the time but yeah there are a lot of American chains I always thought when Japanese tourists come here for shopping I was like we must have like much better shopping than anywhere in Japan and that's so not true Jay why don't you turn your phone off you're too busy of a guy too busy listening and you know while I was there like one small neighborhood of like Osaka had more shopping than like all of Hawaii together and I was like wow but I think in terms of like of American imprint it's there but you don't get this sense of like it's America yeah yeah it's integrated somehow yeah it's integrated they got bathrooms in Japan because we don't have bathrooms here in Hawaii and I wonder if you felt there was a luxury involved in finding bathrooms in Japan well their bathrooms are amazing I have now spoiled like the bidets and all that kind of stuff the heated seats are hard to get used to because I would like sit down and be like this is like someone else's heat I don't like this is disgusting and then I realized like oh this is like quite luxurious and they have whole control panels and stuff like I was shocked I was like okay that's technological advancement in some form I guess so yeah and the other thing I wanted to ask you we only have a minute left is about the school children my recollection years ago is that there were school children everywhere in Japan and they traveled in groups you know sort of preparing to come to Hawaii with a flag out there and they're the cutest possible kids they are the cutest children in the world they are I was I'm not a huge kid person and when I saw them my heart was melting what I did notice was that they could travel on their own I would see six year olds like walking downtown getting on a bus by themselves because it's safe right they get on the train they get on the subway by themselves and I was I almost want to be like are you lost like are you okay and they're like know everything better than I do so I was really impressed by the independence of children there and they were just adorable they all have like identical suits and like little hats on and yeah yeah great so what's your favorite thing that you come away with I'm I'm very interested if you could pick the one thing that left the biggest impression on you that you bring back you know now incorporated in your world view the warmth that was extended to me by Japanese people I thought they'd let me do my own thing instead they would invite me into their homes take me out to eat that was just an amazing time and I think I wasn't expecting that I was expecting a colder more tech culture I guess and the fact that you know they're human just like us and they want us to all have a good time okay as we go out and like to play the picture that we didn't get to see and that's the bullet train I wonder if we can find the picture of the bullet train that would be what I would like to leave there well that's the station okay that's the bullet train station yep it looks so modest and oh it's a clip look at that oh my goodness it is beautiful yeah well maybe we'll have that here someday thank you Stephanie it's great to talk to you it's like a wonderful trip