Things I learned about Japanese culture living in Japan. Especially how it differs from U.S. culture.

1. The lack of a car culture is transformative and its effects cannot be understated.
2. Trains craft their own surrounding culture and urban fabric.
3. Train stations become nexuses of community, culture, and place.
4. The "last train" of the night is its own framing device of timelines, culture, and community.
5. You walk a lot in Japan.
6. Walking allows you to perceive places differently, deeper.
7. Walking is fundamentally more human(ist).
8. When you walk, you interact with passers-by and your environment. They interact with you. It's a bidirectional relationship.
9. People almost always appear exceptionally polite.
10. There is what people say and do in public and what people think. You are expected to read the room. If you can't, you're going to be missing a high-bandwidth channel of information. (本音・建前)
11. Saying goodbye or see you later in Japan is expected to take much longer than in the U.S. If you don't drag it out a bit, it feels callous.
12. A group going their separate ways at the end of a night is a complicated dance.
13. Separation is delayed and rejected until physics intervenes.
14. In the U.S., we'd say "see you next time", walk away and not look back. It's 3 seconds.
15. In Japan, it's drawn out. Many goodbyes are said, many bows are exchanged. You're meant to look back on the escalator and keep waving until they're out of sight.
16. The Japanese life is a very scheduled one; adhoc meetings are rarely a thing.
17. In the U.S., "let's grab coffee sometime" without scheduling anything is genuine in 90% of cases.
18. In Japan, a commitment without a date is a polite way of saying "no" in 80% of cases.
19. The most typical "hard no" you'll hear in Japan is "that's a little difficult."
20. Most experiences in Japan are highly polarized, inherently extremist.
21. You'll often get the best experience in a category, or the worst.
22. Most of the time, it's the best experience.
23. Excellence is the norm; deviation is hammered like the nail that sticks out.
24. Tokyo's hustle and bustle is somehow self-fulfilling; even if you're not in a hurry, you begin to feel as though you ought to be.
25. I didn't expect to like Tokyo. Megacities were never my thing; I figured an Osaka or Kyoto would be more my speed. Tokyo is different, it's less of a megacity than it is a large collection of individual neighborhoods, each with their own unique culture and atmoshphere.
26. When leaving leftover food, I've seen Japanese people bring their hands together and apologize for the neglected remainder. It wasn't about being seen or being ashamed, it was a genuine prayer of remorse.
27. When confused or don't know what to, a common strategy is 前の人 (follow the person in front of you). This comes in handy at train stations. If you're caught in a swarm of moving people and don't know what way to go, going with the flow of people is usually a good bet.
28. Conformity in Japan is kind of a trope and oversimplified. It's also deeply related to (10). Conformity in public is quite high, but the honne-tatemae divide allows people to be non-conformist in their inner worlds. In some ways, the U.S. is more conformist than Japan.
29. No particularly sensitive way to put this. Many Japanese men have a bit of pedophilia. It wouldn't be shocking to hear a mid-thirties salaryman say 18 year olds are his type.