Sources of Frustration

This post will be dedicated to those small, slightly stupid things you discover during your daily life. Here’s what I’ve face-palmed over so far.

1) One-yen coins
I mean, what the flying fudge?! It’s a coin worth 1 YEN!
Let me show you.

I mean, look at that! It’s nothing! They’re made from aluminum (aluminium for non-US people), and though they’re not that big or heavy, they take up wallet space very quickly.

It’s not because Japanese think highly of it, though; they even give them out for free at stores.
I experienced that one day I shopped at a store, and was one or two yen short, which I said out loudly with a bit regretful voice.
”Oh, you can use these, that’s okay”, the woman at the counter said, pointing at a tub with all one-yen coins, as I was searching through my wallet (purse… whatever).
You’d never see that in Denmark. Not long ago, we abandoned the 25-øre coin, probably because it was stupid to have such a low-value coin.

Oh, and you know, Japan has these vending machines everywhere, where you can buy primarily drinks. “Perfect opportunity to get rid of those hideous coins!”, you naively think to yourself, as you approach the machine only to see that THEY DON’T TAKE ANYTHING LOWER THAN TEN-YEN COINS!

Ugh, enough of that… Next!

2) Bikes

There are different things to bikes and biking, but I’ll stick with the bike itself, at least for now.
Number one is the ridiculousness of not equipping bikes with gears. That kind of bikes are widely spread. Mine included - but hey, I bought it for 2000yen, so what the heck!
Number two may be the general height of bikes in Japan. They are so LOW! The seat on my bike is set as high as it gets, and I still feel I ride with my knees right under my chin. I barely extend my legs at all.
The Japanese are even worse; they actually position the seat super low. I have no idea why. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
How people ride it, I will get back to in a dedicated post about biking here.

3) People with a “job”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Of course it’s nice they can give people employment, but making an elderly man stand day in and day out for hours, watching over a entrance/exit to a parking lot, is close to humiliating (in my perspective, anyways).
When I go to school, I pass a few big parking lots with such “guards”. The same man in the morning is there when I pass again in the afternoon, sometimes evening. They have a uniform, a flashing rod (Hech yeah!), and what they do is holding cars back when passerbys cross. They then stand there waving at you, in case you were doubting whether it’s safe to go a not.
Holy fudging Gawd. I don’t even know what to say…
Another case of people with “jobs”, are those who spend hours and hours holding some sign with advertisement for a dining place or whatnot. We’re talking hours here, people!

I feel so sorry for them…

Oh well… I guess some of these are mere “cultural differences”. These are the stupid things that’s struck my mind lately. Be not surprised if you one day find another similar post.