- People are super polite and friendly to visitors (I made sure to dress in obvious American fashion :) - they also just seemed very "good", with no ill-intents. It's the only major city I've visited as a tourist where I never felt people were trying to take advantage of us to earn a $.
- Love the goldilocks food portions - not too much, not too little, just right.
- Overall food was very good and reasonably priced. Of course, you could go to insanely expensive places like any big city.
- Public transportation is phenomenal. The train system is ridiculously large (Shinjuku Station has like 4MM+ people go through a day!) yet efficient. Trains were always on time with very modern status systems (also in English).
- But yes, the trains do get really packed. I never saw the guys who were supposed to "push and pack" people in the trains, maybe those are different lines than what we used.
- City is uber-metro. Every area we visited in Tokyo had it's own Times Square-like area with skyscrapers and giant electronic and neon signs.
- Yes, they love their karaoke. We visited a place that seemed to be a high-rise "mall" (one company) dedicated to karaoke rooms.
A few pics below. I have a lot more but may dump them in Flickr later.
Heidi and I met friends for lunch at a local restaurant in Kanagawa. This was probably our best meal in Japan. I had this sushi-boat type meal, which was fantastic, arguably the best sushi I've ever had:
Here's the famous Shibuya Crossing area - just a mass of people all crossing the street simultaneously, pretty neat:
And I have to just call out this place I stumbled upon in Harajuku (I think?) called Untouchable Toffee - the toffee was awesome, best I've had. In fact, I sent Heidi back there during the week to pick me up more toffee!
Overall, a great city and I hope to be back.
