while i was in japan, i stayed in the ginza area of tokyo. being japanese, i thought that i wouldn’t really be hit with much of a culture shock. i’ve heard stories about what life is like in japan and i’ve been watching japanese tv with current news all my life. what i was not prepared for was the conditions of japan. it is typical in an office to have rows and rows of long desks where each person has about 4 feet of desk space sitting next to each other. there is no sense of privacy.

i think the biggest thing that bothered me while i was there was the definition of personal space in japan. it is completely normal to pack yourself into an already crowded elevator. where i would ordinarily think you can only fit 10 people in an elevator, they squeeze in 15. i guess it all goes with the packing of people into trains. it makes for an uncomfortable ride, though. the elevator starts to get really warm with all those people in there.

with that, though, if you are walking in the street and someone clips you, that seems to be a pretty normal occurence. if you bump into someone, they just keep walking on by.

the other thing about tokyo is that it must be the neon capital of the world. how they manage to cram so many neon signs in such a little space, i’ve got no idea, but there were definitely some places in ginza where it was just as bright at night as it was in the day because of all of the neon signs competing against each other for your attention.

tokyo is shockingly packed with buildings. it wasn’t until i got a view from an observation deck did i really appreciate just how big and crowded tokyo really is. buildings for as far as you can see.