What a fascinating thread this has been 👍🏻
It's been a bonkers thread.
Can you imagine if someone went back to their country and said they had a nice time in the Lake District, been to some nice restaurants and done some amazing walks and loved doing Catbells and Blencathra and mentioned the things that she thought we did well and people piled on about prisoners in the uk are going to be let out of jail, our education system is falling, The Rochdale grooming scandal, The post office corruption, NHS waiting list, Knife crime, including children killing children, the Southport massacre, domestic violence and the light sentence ( if any)the offenders get,that British people eat junk food all the time and most of them are over weight and dress scruffy with holes and slashes in their jeans , alll uk people are lazy and want benefits. The last goes on and on.
Out of that list there is some truths and some misconceptions
that people may have about us across the wohld.
It's the same with Japan.
Most countries in the world have some sort of corruption, or undesirable aspects to it if you scratch below the surface.
From my point of view I liked visiting Japan. All the Japenese people I met informally ( ie, not a paid workers such as in hospitality and retail) were extremely pleasant, generous and went above and beyond to help me.
The landscape was gorgeous.
I loved the contrast between the centre of Tokyo and places that were nice and calm less than an hour away.
I think it is mad that people have posted on here with uninformed opinions 'I think I read somewhere that.......' was a pretty much start to a comment.
*Same. I travelled from Tokyo right out to Hokkaido but saw nothing but concrete and rice paddy fields. Very bleak Soviet style architecture.
Not every square inch is going to be amazing. It's not always sunflower fields going from Burnley to Bolton either, you know!
And if you're vegetarian and don't speak Japanese, you're basically fucked. Lovely people, so polite, but I nearly starved to death in the ten days I was there.
Why didn't you use the Happy Cow app or even Google maps asking for ' vegetarian restaurants near me' Apart from translate it was probably the most used app!!
In the main cities of Japan there are plenty of international restaurants for people who don't fancy Japanese food.
People on this thread have metioned suicide rates being high in Japan. While sadly there are suicides, Japan isnt in the top15 world wide for suicide per 100,000 of population. Many of the countries that have a higher suicide rate are European.
In summary, it's great to be a tourist. I wouldn't want to live there but that said, I'm not always happy with the UK.'s way of doing things either.
However both countries have some amazing qualities.