Originally Posted by
Deathknightish
I saw on my Facebook feed that today is exactly one year since I left Japan, specifically Tokyo, where I and a friend had been for two weeks.
Have you ever been to Japan? What were your impressions? Did it fulfill your expectations?
For me, it was my best trip ever, and I've traveled a lot. What I was surprised by was how cheap it was! Everybody talks about how Tokyo's super expensive, but everything was 20-30% cheaper than in my country (Sweden), alcohol was about 40-50% cheaper which I liked as I love to try out new beers.
I'm not really a weeb anymore, but it was still fun to run around in Akihabara and see the blend between gaming, anime and normal electronics. My favourite shocking memory is when I entered a normal electronics store, and the top two floors were assigned exclusively to hentai. It wasn't even that obvious that it suddenly became 18+, just a blue half-curtain.Both me and my friend had a big laugh there.
The food was amazing, got to try out a lot of new dishes not served in Japanese restaurants here in Sweden. I was happy that I could finally try out some proper Kobe beef without being ruined economically. Japanese curry is now one of my favourite dishes!
I was a bit surprised by how little English people knew, with it being such a well-educated and high tech country and all. I think we had proper conversations with 4 or 5 people during the entire trip. Of course, we learned some basic phrases in Japanese so we could get by, "kore onegaishimasu!" and pointing really made visits to restaurants a breeze, haha.
I loved all the neon signs and noise, really felt like I was running around in a cyberpunk city, minus the dystopian setting. We lived in Shibuya and only had a 8-minute walk to the skyrail, so walking home at night was a huge bombardment of noise and lights, which had me absolutely ecstatic. Not sure I would've liked to live there permanently, though.
People have talked about how racist the Japanese are, but I just couldn't see it. Everybody was super polite and nice to us, even if we couldn't understand each other, except for one older woman at one restaurant. She was super grumpy and just sighed when we pointed at the menu. faith in humanity was quickly restored though, as we could see her husband, who was the cook, stood inside the kitchen looking at us apologetically.
I'm already planning to return in two or three years' time, and then I hope that I can go somewhere else, other than Tokyo and Yokohama. Kyoto would be nice to see, and Osaka.