People love to post wacky pictures of strange things in Japan and then caption them as "only in Japan". However, there is strangeness all over the world and the main difference between what I saw there and what I see back home is not the look of the people and the type of pop cultural influence behind the funky self-presentation. For me, "only in Japan" has much more to do with individual acts and experiences which I doubt would happen elsewhere. It's about people who (generally tend to) wait patiently in long lines without cutting or shoving or how they slowly and gently lay something on your desk instead of smacking it down because they don't want to appear crude or disruptive. It's about how people apologize for things that aren't their fault and many, many more lovely (and not so lovely) things which I talk about in this blog.
A lot of the psychological elements of which I speak are what I think of as "only in Japan" moments, not the goofy, wacky shots of atypical people and things, and I'm going to miss those experiences which are deeply and quintessentially Japanese.
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