Hello!

Thailand! My first solo international trip! It was a really great experience!

I'll ramble about what I felt. Basically, there's nothing particularly useful here lol

Cultural Differences as a Trigger for Questioning Your Own Country

I was able to experience many differences from Japan~

How to ride trains.
Toilets, washlets.
Tipping culture.

And so on - I experienced many cultures that don't exist in Japan. Among these, what I want to highlight is about pedestrian traffic lights.

To put it simply, the "green" phase of pedestrian traffic lights in Thailand is extremely short. Surprisingly so!

During my stay, I wanted to do laundry and was heading to a coin laundry.

I could see the coin laundry on the other side of the road.

"Cars are constantly passing by... I can't cross... I wonder if there's a traffic light..."

While muttering like this, I looked around and found traffic lights and a crosswalk.

"There it is! This!"

It was a push-button type, so when I pressed the button, it made a loud "beep beep beep" sound and displayed the number of seconds the pedestrian light would stay "green." And it was an incredibly short duration!

"Oh no! I have to run! lol"

Even local children were running across the crosswalk. Instead of a crosswalk, it was more like a "cross-run-walk" lol

For me personally, it was a very stimulating experience!

First of all, Thailand is a car society, a motorcycle society. The traffic volume of vehicles in the city is incredible. Therefore, I guessed that roads aren't designed to be pedestrian-friendly. At the same time, I suddenly thought,

"I've never run across a crosswalk in Japan," and became curious about whether there are rules for the duration of green lights. When I searched it up, it seems Japanese pedestrian signals are designed based on people who move 1 meter per second. Reference site

If I had just lived normally in Japan, I probably never would have accessed this information.

When you go abroad, there are many cultures different from Japan.

When you encounter such things, it really becomes a trigger for thinking!

I think encountering such questions is extremely important in future society. Experience is necessary as a trigger for that. There's all kinds of information on the web. However, differences in knowledge arise depending on whether you can access it or not.

Unless you have questions, you can't access that information.

In that sense, the value of experience is huge! I thought I want to continue investing in various experiences! It was a good trip to Thailand that gave me various triggers~