Odd

The Japanese people are incredibly accommodating: you need something, they will move mountains to help you get it. From the tiniest thing (postage) to a significantly more expensive and time consuming process (my new tv), this has been driven home repeatedly.

That's why I was so surprised to realize how systematically the infrastructure is not friendly to people with disabilities. Come to that, how rarely you see them- I was under the impression that my junior high didn't even have any disabled students, until a whole class of them showed up at sports day to tell "the three little pigs." I hadn't seen them before that, and I've only seen them once since.

The majority of the places I've been have not been wheelchair accessible, or only if you take a very circuitous and hard to find route. Most have stairs leading up to the ramp, and many don't have elevators.

Maybe that's why I never see people with walkers or wheelchairs- once you are forced to use one, you're confined to a very limited accessible space.

It just strikes me as strange that such a friendly, helpful, welcoming community would miss this opportunity to make people's lives easier.

Disclaimer: this is from personal observation and may be incorrect, misinterpreted, or misinformed. I hope it is.