Name: 12 Things in Japan That DON'T Make Sense
Uploaded: 2025-09-28T18:12:37.000Z
Duration: 22 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It's often said the worst time of year in Japan is summer, but this is false.

Basic passive voice

Once upon a time, one of my early years living here, I was tucked up fast asleep in my bed, when all of a sudden I heard some ominous shouting.

It was coming from a speaker outside my apartment window, and it was borderline deafening.

Now this was not long after the Tohoku disaster, and I thought, maybe something else bad was about to happen, right?

And as my Japanese was pretty basic at the time, I couldn't make out what was being said.

And so I arose eloquently from my futon, stumbled over to the window, and peered outside.

And there on the road was a little truck, plastered with half a dozen banners, and a man and a woman precariously on the roof, waving gleefully and shouting all the while.

And I realized to my absolute horror that I'd been rudely awoken for politics!

And in the days ahead, I heard it every single day, not just from one truck, but half a dozen different trucks, all with different political campaigns, all with different political candidates.

The noise got so bad that I practically had to smother myself with a pillow to make it physically inaudible.

Above all though, it just didn't make sense.

In a country where public transport is tantamount to a moving library, it felt like a bit of a contradiction.

And honestly, if a British politician tried this, it really wouldn't end well.

Because you would know that is the politician you don't want to vote for.

Yeah, I'll make your life better, I swear!

So I asked around to discover how this was a thing.

And it turns out these trucks are called Geisensya.

And one reason they're popular is Japan has some pretty strict rules when it comes to political campaigning.

For example, door knocking isn't allowed.

Campaigns are only allowed to have 70,000 leaflets.

TV ads promoting individual candidates are restricted.

Only political parties can promote themselves.

And so the aim of the sound truck is essentially to drum the name of the candidate into your head.

And in some respects, remind people in Japan that politics even exists.

Because voter turnout is amongst the lowest in the world.

In the 2024 election, just 53% of the population voted.

Compared to 60% in the UK and 63% in the US respectively.

But the trucks essentially mean the more political instability, the more hard of hearing you become.

And so today I want to share with you 12 things about Japan that don't make sense, at least on the surface.

Because for me, the most interesting part is understanding the why behind everything, right?

And now you know why it's possible to stay the hell away from Japan during election season.

So my new hobby this year has been collecting records of my favourite artists.

Artists like Tatsuro Yamashita, king of city pop.

And of course the Smiths, back when Morrissey was good.

And you know, one of the most important things a band can do is think of their name.

Because it becomes like a statement, doesn't it?

I'm thinking bands like the Spice Girls, the in your face, rebellious, all about girl power.

The Backstreet Boys, bad boys, hiding in the shadows, rebels.

New Kids on the Block, out with the old, in with the next generation.

There's a sort of statement or message going on there underneath those names.

It sounds like when you get like crisps all over the camera.

And, uh, which I have done. 17 Years Old and Berlin Wall.

It just sounds like a historic experience.

Yeah, it doesn't sound very good, does it?

In the same way we see Japanese English marketing on numerous products here.

To add a sense of prestige, but often it goes wrong because it doesn't make sense.

And having a quirky band name is a great way to stand out.

And often if you read into why these bands chose the name, there isn't much logic behind it.

To quote them on why they chose that name.

From the Japanese cuisine for cooking animal innards, to the sensation of the maximum amount of your hormones coming to the boil.

It's almost like they just went to a dictionary of English words and just sort of picked them out randomly.

But these band names are written in Katakana and use a lot of foreign borrowed words, right?

For example, Bump of Chicken is Bump of Chicken, which is often just shortened to Bump.

Maximum the Hormone is Maximum the Hormone.

Like phonetically, these band names sound kind of cool.

And I think that is where the band names are emphasized.

On sounding good phonetically rather than having any implicit meaning.

Many artists here don't have to worry about going international.

People just want to focus on the domestic Japanese music market.

So they don't need to worry about having an embarrassing or slightly odd connotation overseas.

And honestly, when you think of half the bland, boring, rubbish band names we have in the West, like Westlife, Little Mix, Five.

Give me Bump of Chicken and Crispy Camera Club any day of the week.

One of the greatest pleasures in life is walking into a car showroom, picking out a car and buying it there and then.

That's the personification of freedom right there.

Because when you buy a car here, and I'm not making this up, you have to prove that you have a car parking space by sending the local police round to measure it with a tape measure and report back to the car seller that you do indeed have a space.

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12 Things in Japan That DON'T Make Sense

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