If you know even a little Japanese by reading this sign you can get your first glimpse of what “us and them” means in Japan: the message in English is “Welcome to Japan” but the bigger message in Japanese is “okaeri nasai” (おかえりなさい) which doesn’t exactly mean “welcome to Japan” but something closer to “welcome home”; this is the typical everyday phrase to greet a family member when they come home. “Welcome to Japan” would be “Nihon e yokoso” (日本へようこそ) but for a foreigner to understand that, they should know Japanese. And of course foreigners don’t know Japanese –after all they are, well, foreigners.
(For a bigger version of this picture both in color and black and white, check my "Japan Arekore" set on Flickr)
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