Traveling is living intensified. – Rick Steves
When you’re in a foreign country, it’s like you’re a little kid again: everything is a little frightening and fascinating. – Hugh Alexander Curtas
50 THINGS I NOW KNOW ABOUT TOKYO:
1) Forget Pearl Harbor; the Japanese are a lot friendlier than Germans.
2) Tokyo is the world epicenter of sensory overload. Nothing you have seen or heard prepares you for the bombardment (poor choice of words) of lights, people, and urban intensity.
3) Tokyo Station makes Grand Central look like Wichita, Kansas.
4) That said, it’s a very quiet for a place that’s moving 30 million souls around.
5) They’re not very big in the hips, butt, or breasts (and you’ve never seen so many bowed legs in your life), but Japanese women don’t know how to dress poorly.
6) The men aren’t far behind.
7) African-Americans are rarer in Tokyo than a Republican in Botswana. In eight days we saw five black people. One of them was a chef in a kitchen.
8) New York: 20 million people, 20 million stories. Tokyo: 30 million people, one haircut.
9) You’re as likely to find bad fish in Japan as you are to find good sushi in Sioux City.
10) There are no fat people in Japan, except Sumo wrestlers. The only slobs we’ve seen were all speaking English. American English.
