Transitional Space

It can be strangely challenging for a foreigner to understand Japan's concepts of space and transitional space. But a space is defined quite different in Japanese people's minds when everyone has to treasure a precious composition of a narrow space in each household.

In a big city, everyone seems to collide into one another for three dimensional spaces - house, street and a subway - where they interact invisibly or physically, but each person is culturally and perceptively in a separate space - even a tiny one. The order of arranged things, concepts, definitions, behaviors and expectation is implicitly accepted by all societal members. Automatically recorded announcements and instructions are heard everywhere to remind residents to follow routines and rules and principles for the extraordinary orderly society. 

People walk in an order like a case of using an escalator in a subway. People normally stand on rolling steps on the left side, and left an empty space on a right side for hurry people getting pass easily. 

Even in a crowded street, people are still consciously to keep one subtle personal space between oneself and others. 

In viewing a little garden at one Japanese household or public park, more than values of decoration and natural beauty, Japanese people seem to convert a real size of nature into a miniature. 

The peaceful garden can turn out to a divine world of people for their own world inside their residential place.  

Japanese people find different ways of keeping their cells co-existing with other cells in a public place or public space. Japanese people love reading. But they also read on a train or subway to keep their physical existence separate to other existences. Foreigner can see commuters read on a subway train. People believe knowledge and information are vital for their lives, career and spiritual needs. 

Japanese people also pay more attention to orderly arrangements of personal belongings at home. They are supposed to place shoes, slippers in appropriate directions and positions for guests and family members. 

Before entering a temple or pagoda, people need to purify their physical bodies by washing hands, faces, and mouths at a water fountain in front of the entrance gate. 

Understanding space and purification of Japanese culture is a must for foreign visitors to discover and learn, not only one day or hour, but years. 

Saint Paul, Minnesota June 14, 2011