Vancouver to Tokyo

We’re at the airport waiting on our flight home.
We worked pretty hard to find some non-Japanese food to tide us over.

Impressions of Japan:

1) Extremely clean. There is no litter, no cigarette butts, no gum on the sidewalk. There are also
no garbage cans. If you buy something at a
take-out place, you return any garbage to the
shop counter and they dispose of it. Otherwise, you take your garbage
home with you.
2) No smoking. You pay a fine of 1000 yen ($8) if you are caught smoking in public, to be paid on the spot.
3) Everyone is extremely polite. No pushing,
raised voices or honking.
4) Anytime you leave somewhere, they wave
until you are out of sight.
5) The toilets. The cleanest bathrooms ever,
even in parks and malls. All Toto toilets with
heated seats, water spraying whatever you
choose and white noise. Always lots of toilet
paper and toilet seat cleaner. As for the seat
heater, they’re hot enough to elicit a “whoa!”
when you sit down.
6) The food. Probably not our favorite - lots of
squid, cuttlefish and crab. Lots of noodles.
Not nearly enough bread.
7) The public transportation is very clean and
very quiet but the seats are surprisingly
small.
8) They don’t mow the grass anywhere or pull
weeds. Yet the gardens and yards are
serene and don’t appear particularly
overgrown.
9) Reading signs, packaging and directions is
impossible.
10) There are 7Elevens EVERYWHERE!!
We are feeling fortunate to have experienced everything we did in Japan, We will arrive home this afternoon 30 minutes before we left Tokyo.
Still trying to wrap my head around that one.
I guess we get that day back that we lost a while back.

Signing off from Japan.
Until next time!もっと詳しく