Dubious Quality

You'll find a lot of these in Tokyo:

--restaurants. So, so many restaurants. It seemed like there was one very fifty feet, at least.

--employees. Every store was fully staffed, and everyone seemed to know their job extremely well. 

--long pants and shirts. Even when it's boiling hot, and a lot of black pants/white shirt ensembles as well.

--cheerfulness. People were unbelievably nice, even to us. Big smiles, super helpful, and usually very patient.

--stairs. Good God, there are a lot of stairs. 

--vending machines. Like I said previously, they're everywhere.

--french fries, churros, and snow cones. Shockingly popular everywhere we went, and we went to plenty of non-tourist places.

--napkins. You get a little wet nap before a meal that you use to clean your hands, but very few restaurants gave you napkins to use during the meal. 

You won't find many of these :

--trash cans/bins. They just don't seem to exist, unless you go to 7-11, which always has a trash can. 

--people carrying water bottles. It's just not a thing. We joked that everyone was so thin because they were dehydrated.

--dirty toilets. Nope. They're almost all pristine.

--potholes. Not one in two weeks, not even in the country. It was great to go to a country that actually invests in infrastructure and enjoy the benefits.

--overweight people, at least in Tokyo. I don't think more than 1-2% of people in Tokyo are overweight. 

--that one asshole. You know how in the U.S., there's always one person being rude or loud or just being an asshole in general, and it ruins everything for everyone else, whether it's a movie or a restaurant or a subway train? That one asshole doesn't seem to exist in Japan, which was both relaxing and refreshing.

--menace. None of that, either. It was incredibly relaxing. 

--freezing air conditioning. It was never cold inside a restaurant, even with the air conditioning on.

--big city smell. Tokyo has no smell at all because it's so clean.

I know I mentioned a few of those previously, but I included them anyway.

On our first full day in Tokyo, Eli 22.1 was flying through the subway, looking at signs in Japanese and deciphering them almost instantly (I don't even know how), and a few times, I lagged behind a bit coming down stairs. He'd told me at the start of the trip that all I had to do was follow him (which was true, and it was great), and he looked back at me once and said, "I need to attach a little leash to you so we don't get separated."

I laughed and agreed wholeheartedly.