Santi, a reader in the United States, will be moving to Japan soon. He wants to know how to prepare for living in Japan. Here are some of my suggestions for anyone who wants to acclimate quickly to life in Japan.
* Practice eating dinner to loud music. In Japan, background music (called BM for short) is really FM--foreground music. They play the music so loud at restaurants you can hardly hear the other person talk. When you walk into a convenience store, loud music will be blaring to help you shop and when you go to a gasoline station, loud music will infiltrate into your gas tank until you've got rock 'n' petrol.
* Practice listening to the stereo and the TV at the same time. Music is often played on TV programs while the people on the program are talking. There's even music during some news programs. It is not uncommon for TV shows about true crime to suddenly break into the theme from "Mission Impossible." It's no wonder one of the most popular hobbies in Japan is listening to music.