Polite, quiet, clean, unrushed, friendly, safe are just some of the words so far.

By the time I had left the airport on the coach to Haneka I was impressed by the level of politeness from not just the staff – who were the embodiment of all things polite – but every Japanese person I interacted with in any way. There is “polite because I am paid to be” and “polite because this is how it should be” and that latter is the case here. The small bows from people not just when they are dealing with me (dealing sounds such a harsh word. I mean buying a drink in a shop to the hotel receptionist) are strange but not oddly so. It’s strange to be treated nicely. (That sounds like people usually throw bricks at me and have a ready supply of barge poles.) You know those people that stop you in the street to try and get you to sign up for a credit card? Saw one who walked up to a guy some 10ft in front. Lots of small bows and the tone of voice appeared to be more “I think you will like this / find it helpful” rather than the tone we get back home. Made me wonder how much was cultural, how much was commission-led and therefore how much was a little over the top. But we’d still never see that in the UK.
My home city I would call lived in, not clean. London and New York I’d call dirty, San Francisco was tidy. But here it’s clean. No litter, nothing I saw yesterday was lying around in a state of disrepair. Overall it felt clean but not obsessively so.
Coming to the hotel in the taxi and walking around last night it struck me as quiet traffic. No horns, revving of engines. Just more than your average number of bikes and lots of cars quietly getting to where they were going. I realised that as we were walking back through the city last night the traffic was there but our conversation could still be had.
It feels right so far. It meets what I expected, exceeds some aspects and a couple of others I didn’t see coming. For instance at an airport check-in you look along the line of ladies staffing the desks and see different shapes and sizes and hair etc. Not here, all very uniform with the ladies in height, hair colour. And it’s odd walking and knowing that it is you who sticks out as the stranger in a strange land. This is not bad or feels intimidating and it something I really should have appreciated because if I’m surrounded by japanese people I must be in Japan :)