There’s a hilarious article on The Times about the widening culture gap between young and old people in Japan:

Apart from putting on their make-up at stations, young Japanese have adopted such “vices” as swinging umbrellas, eating in public and crossing their legs on the subway. While these are minor sins elsewhere, in Japan they are being taken with the utmost seriousness.

They’ve established an agency (in all seriousness) called the Study Group Relating to the Prevention of Behaviour that Causes Discomfort Among Numerous People in Public Places.

You see a fair bit of old people being real dicks to younger people in Japan for stuff that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow back home. I saw an old dude shouting at a guy skateboarding on a road in the city the other day. The skater wasn’t even on the footpath, he was skating on a non busy road and the old guy was running down the road yelling at him. Then there was a guy who wandered up and down a train car telling people sitting reading messages on their mobile phones and not annoying anyone to turn them off and put them away. Not a train company employee or anything, just a nosy old man with an attitude problem. The number of glares you get if you walk down the street eating an icecream is pretty funny as well.

Posted in Japan on Monday May 16, 2005.

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