Probably pretty typical thoughts on Japan

We just returned from 10 days in Japan, and though I've been a horrible weeb for many years it was my first time. This was a family trip, so balancing some cultural stuff and "endless shopping for the pop culture items the kids really love" was a tough act, but we managed.

What they do well - slash - what I will miss

• Trains. Duh. New York and maybe DC aside, the US is not very good at this at all. Thanks, Detroit. Combine the urban rail of big cities like Tokyo or Osaka with the national infrastructure of the Shinkansen and others, and you get a really easily navigable country.
• Food on the go. While restaurants aren't always likely to offer to-go meals, that's largely because the other options are numerous: Bento counters at the train stations that offer longer trips, convenience stores with honest-to-god actual food in them, and drink vending machines around every corner. Now, a lot of this is going to be wanting in the "healthy" aspect, as the nation's favorite food seems to be some form of fried pork or another. But it doesn't mean you can't find some.
• Food on the cheap. Maybe it's because I live on the west coast and all Americans live in a dystopia, but I'm just used to food being over-the-top expensive. Getting out of a restaurant with a family of 4 (which is really 3 and a half considering the size of one of us) for under $60 is an achievement, but in Japan a filling and delicious meal for 20 bucks is not unheard of at all.
• A sense of living in a society. The stereotypes of reserved, quiet, overly-polite people are not off-base, nor are the ones about snooty urban dwellers in the megacity for whom foreigners, bumpkins, and tourists are just In The Way. It really just all adds up to a society that recognizes that pulling your weight makes for a better life for everyone. America has always been about lionizing rugged individualism, but thanks to factors like the modern social-media-driven internet and (to a lesser degree) working remotely, we're more atomized than ever. Seeing a society operate as a whole is not as shocking as you might think — in fact, it's frustrating to see just how little everyone has to contribute to make things just a little cleaner, quieter, faster, more smoothly-functioning. Of course, they have to vote and spend that way too for things to really get well-oiled, and that's probably a pipe dream here.
• Urban green areas. Everyone's on this tip in the 21st century. But they seem ahead of the curve. Maybe it's Shinto. Maybe it's because there have been large cities in Japan for many more centuries than some western countries have even existed. But it's nice to have the parks, some of which are grand and impressive like Shinjuku Gyoen and others that are just little escapes.

Things I could do without

• Standing. Oh my god, they hate to sit. This isn't just in Tokyo where space is at an ultimate premium. It's everywhere. They have a fetish for standing. Combine this with never letting your bags hit the floor, and your lazy American feet will rebel within a couple days. I suppose this is one of those "how little everyone has to contribute" things for a nice society, but would it kill you to add a chair?
• Holding on to your trash. It's counterintuitive, but I assume not having trash cans anywhere probably does contribute to an overall cleaner place.
• Humidity. Why does nobody use raincoats, I think to myself. Why do they all use umbrellas? Then I wind up with clothes drenched in sweat, as wet as if I wasn't wearing the raincoat at all. Now I get it. I guess enough years living out here has made me forget what humidity is like.

Pleasant surprises

• Great service. You never know what the customer service level in a place is gonna be like. And my standards have dropped significantly since living in Eugene. But though interactions are generally short and polite, there's a basic floor for service that is "pretty decent."
• Great coffee. I guess I thought of Japan as a tea country, but it's both a tea and a coffee country. Convenience store coffee, like the snacks and lunches, is just a better caliber. I was worried it'd be like England where the coffee is bad and mostly instant. But let's be real: England's tea isn't good either.
• Good beer. Here's another thing where the baseline is "not bad." Asahi, Sapporo, and Kirin are nothing to write home about and you've probably had them at a Japanese restaurant, but as a basic and cheap offering, they are all head and shoulders above our Czech/German-style macros like Budweiser or Coors. Plus, in recent years, craft brewing has made its way through the country and you can get some fun and hoppy flavors even in midsize cities like Nara.
• Good English. Duolingo plus years of anime and Akira Kurosawa movies can only get you so far. But even outside of cities there's enough English knowledge that you can at least meet in the middle. As with most countries, a sincere effort to do some interacting in their language gets you pretty far. You have to get beyond the basics to know what the pair of schoolgirls behind you are saying about your sorry gaijin ass though.

Verdict

It's long and expensive to get there, but cheap and easy to be there. If you could get a massive culture shock of a very different place but with all the conveniences and fried pork of a first-world country, why wouldn't you? I wish I'd done it sooner.