I recently returned from my first trip to Japan, and I thought that the late nights of solitude would be filled with blogging. Instead, they were filled with uploading pictures to Facebook and Flickr. I took over 1,600 images in 10 days…though only uploaded 515. Is a third “good” images a decent percentage? Who knows. The point is, I told my sotry through pictures instead of words. Check it out.
Here are the things that are better about Japan (Tokyo specifically) than the United States (Los Angeles specifically):
1. The food
2. The food
3. The food, dear god the food! I’m not saying that there’s no good food in LA, because there absolutely is. I AM saying that everything (EVERYTHING) I ate in Japan was fantastic. My travel companions may disagree on the “EVERYTHING”, but they would not disagree that on a whole the food was amazing. Even the most ghetto fast-food place was better than most analogous US places.
4. Public transit. This can be said of other US cities in comparison to LA, as well, of course. Trains people. It’s what’s for dinner.
5. The respect. I understand that the Japanese respect and pride of work is a cultural thing; but, what I don’t understand is why. They don’t have the typical religious guilt to guide them into obeying so why are people there so respectful? Why is the guy with the crap job pushing elevator buttons SO respectful and with no attitude? It’s fantastic.
6. The products. Anything I could ever want at my fingertips. In 10 different colors.
7. The girls. This will be an unpopular opinion, but it has to be said. LA has amazing amounts of beautiful women, to be sure…but every girl in Tokyo is running around in mini-skirts and heels. I mean, c’mon, you have to give credit where credit is due.
8. No fat people. ‘Nuff said.
And in stark contrast to #5 especially, the pizza delivery dude asked me if I happened to have a pen to sign my credit card receipt. Again. That would never happen in Japan.