84. Juliette’s impressions of Japanese cities_TMBTP

“Aim for nicer toilets, that’s my main tip for Australia”: Perspectives on Japanese cities from an 8-year old Australian, Juliette. This episode of This Must Be The Place is a kind of follow-up to the late-2017 episode, “Three travelling planners discuss their initial impressions of Japanese cities”, in which Elizabeth, Helen and Nicole did a round-up of their impressions – as planners and geographers, but largely uninformed by research – of Japanese cities in comparison to Australia. Here we hear impressions of Japan from a slightly different perspective – courtesy of Juliette, who is 8 years old and one of Elizabeth’s nieces, and who recently spent about 2 weeks on holiday in Japan. The episode was recorded at a dinner party in Jan’s backyard (so there’s a bit of plate clanking, and chattering, and some other guests including Nyoko from Japan sometimes chiming in). Juliette discusses: • Toilets - “aim for nicer toilets, that’s my main tip for Australia”; • Streets – with crowds of people, but “there wasn’t that many cars, and people were just walking in the middle of the road”; • Children walking to school (in single file, parentless, and on Saturdays); • Riding bikes, without helmets; • Traffic - “they drove considerably noticeably slower than they do here, and they weren’t eager to run the people on the bikes over” (a bit of link to the recent TMBTP episode on ‘roads, rights and rage’); • The uncomfortable dynamics of cat, owl, and other animal cafes (at one “there were 5 cats lined up at the window just looking out”); • Trains (bullet, rapid, and local) - “and there was one running pretty much every 5 minutes”; • Food – wasabi octopus, kit kats, vending machines, milk tea; • Making sense of the world via dire warning cartoons; and • (Perhaps a bit too much for a planning podcast) things about Harry Potter, porcupines, and video games. There are also musings on the dynamics of public space in different countries. The day after returning to Australia, there was “a man doing graffiti in the telephone booth”, and Sarah (Juliette’s mother’s) bike got stolen. Juliette reflects on how unexpected things like this rarely happened to them as tourists in Japan, which has some pros and cons. “My overall conclusion is there’s some things which I would definitely miss about Japan” (for example “I miss everyone actually being polite to you”), “but then there’s some things which you just have none of in Japan, like crazy guys, or graffiti artists”. Also preferred (in a way) about Australia is “you never know what’s going to happen – like you never know when someone’s going to steal your bike”.