Editor’s note: Today on Math and Musings you’ll hear the “just in case” episode Franklin and I recorded long before we left for Japan and before we knew how easy it would be to record and post. Next week’s podcast will start a three-part series of episodes recorded abroad, but today you can enjoy both our domestic podcast and the chronicle below, my reflections on Japan.

If I were to describe Japan to an American it would go something like this.

First, take every stereotype you have about Japanese culture, then multiply it by fifty.

Next, take a little bit of pretty much every other culture on Earth, mix it in, then smush it onto an island with apparently no natural resources and somehow turn it into one of the most advanced and productive societies in the history of the world.

Got it?

I would say that there’s really nothing to prepare an American for visiting Japan, except that’s really not true. Everything you know about Japan is true, and it’s even more intense than you think. Most stereotypes of people and places overestimate particular characteristics; Japanese stereotypes are but kernels of truth. (My notes on Japanese baseball, chronicled elsewhere, are but a microcosm of this broader theme.)

You have this idea that Tokyo is big.

It’s bigger.

You have this idea that there are a lot of people.

There’s more.

You have this idea that there’s Pokemon and anime and manga and Nintendo all over the place.

There is. And a few dozen other cartoons and characters you’ve yet to meet.

Sushi, ramen, soba, Udon… McDonald’s, Starbucks, 7-Eleven. Yup, it’s all there, and even with all this official retail there’s still people selling random stuff on the street.

Is that a thousand-year-old shrine over there?

Yeah, right next to Starbucks.

You say the pattern of this particular fabric is a few centuries old?

Yes, and we accept Apple Pay.

There are many such contradictions in Japanese culture (I’m going to call it “culture” but really it’s about a thousand cultures simultaneously), and, well, I was lucky enough to bear witness to them the past week and a half as I traveled about the country with my family.

The thing to me that was most noticeable about Japan–this was my first visit–was the rules. Written or unwritten, there were rules, and not following them was just not an option.

It reminded me very much of a stereotypical communist country: a lot of officials and bureaucrats and people in uniform.

But I don’t think I’d ever been in a place that was less communist as economies go. A totally rigid society, yes, but communist? Give me a break. The place was like an Ayn Rand wet dream. It was a wildly free market where everything was for sale. Everything was cheap but nothing was free: a lot of transactions.

Look at a shrine? Two bucks.

Pray to Buddha? Five bucks.

Ride the subway? Buck and a half.

Shot of sake right there on the street?

First off, yes, that was actually a thing. It was 100 yen. That’s the equivalent of like 70 cents. Someone is pouring alcohol for tourists on the street at 70 cents a glass.

It’s in the little tent between the Shinto statue and the Starbucks.

You can’t really blame the Japanese for cramming so much onto their series of islands. In total it’s about four percent the size of the United States. Big open spaces are not a thing, at least not in the cities we visited. (I think there’s green out there in the hinterlands; most of what I saw was either cement or a vending machine.) The public infrastructure is mind-boggling, and there is not one cubic inch of wasted space. Private living and workspaces, too, are similarly compact: not one cubic inch of wasted space. They build to the sky, they build underground; the efficiency is staggering.

I should note that there are some greenspaces in Japan, even in the big, crowded cities we visited. For the record we spent time in Tokyo and Kyoto, and both of those megalopolises had their shares of parks and gardens. That you could enter for a few bucks. (Love that.) They’re good as squeezing those things in too. And in a way I’m glad they’re regulating these things now. A hundred years ago Western tourists used to just help themselves and sail home with Japanese trinkets; now they keep them here displayed in museums.

When I was in college the most popular cultural observer of this planet was Thomas Friedman. Every professor I had assigned one or more of his books, and admittedly I did the same when they let me move to the front of the classroom.

Three of Friedman’s books stood out to me: The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat, and Crowded. These three titles represent everything I witnessed in Japan.

See above for the interplay among Lexuses and olive trees, perhaps replacing olive trees here with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. And I guess I didn’t see too many Lexuses either, but plenty of luxury cars and other modes of high-tech gadgetry. “Cellphones and shrines” might be the Asian equivalent of what Friedman saw farther west.

On the subject of flatness I can say that in a metaphorical sense Friedman was not only dead on, but perhaps even more prescient than he anticipated. Twenty years ago (when the book was new) the world had flattened, yes, and since we were all connecting to the same Internet our relationships were a bit more democratized. (A terribly simplistic view of the text.) But in 2005 if I wanted to call someone in Japan? I’m picturing like 1950s-style switchboards with flashing lights and maybe Radar O’Reilly trying to patch through a string of cities to reach an operator in some Western Union office. And don’t even get me started on calling cards.

Today though?

On a lark I took out my phone and dialed a number in the United States.

Person answered and we spoke like we were standing next to each other. That I did not expect. To say my fear of being cut off from home while away and unable to call or text or e-mail was a bit unfounded is the understatement of the century. The world is not only flat; it’s the size of a dot.

So goes the metaphor. Literal size, however? In Tokyo you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you, unless you’re on the 30th or 40th floor of your building. Which is the size of many of their buildings so it’s not as unusual as you’d think. Yeah, there’s skyscrapers, like, everywhere, though what people are actually doing in these buildings remains a total mystery to me. Secret indoor agriculture? Just an army of logistics experts, I guess, because how any products moved anywhere in that crucible was stunning to me.

I’m just glad the buildings were air conditioned, because God damn was it hot. (Friedman was on the nose there, never mind the politics of it.) Before I left the thing people told me about visiting Japan in the summer is that… it would be hot.

I can now vouch for this.

It was hot. And humid. And, to use Friedman’s phrase, it was crowded. That didn’t make it feel any cooler. Seeing hundreds of people with umbrellas to block the sun seems kind of ridiculous until you get here and realize yes, that’s pretty much the only prayer you’ve got against the blazing heat. That and hiding in your hotel room, which I also became quite good at.

TV writer and occasional actor Phil Rosenthal once described Tokyo as like Manhattan except stretched out to be the size of Los Angeles. Spot-on assessment. The giant, crowded city that just keeps going.

You’d think such a place would be difficult to keep tidy and kempt. I’m sure it is difficult, but they’ve been able to figure it out. Somehow there is not a speck of trash anywhere in Japan, especially amazing considering there are no garbage cans. Seriously. This I’d been warned about, but you’ve kind of got to see it to believe it. There are no garbage cans anywhere. You’d think this would create mountains of trash, but no, it actually has the opposite effect. Since there’s no place to throw anything away, people just don’t. (That’s actually a pretty good description of how people stay in line here: you just don’t.) You either return your garbage immediately to the person who gave it to you (a food wrapper, for example), or you just hang onto it until you get home. Do secret police officers come out and tackle you if you litter on the sidewalks? I didn’t want to experiment.

Nowhere on Earth have I ever seen more obedient people than in Japan. This is a factual statement, not meant to criticize or applaud. Honestly I’m not sure I could ever fit in here, and it’s got nothing to do with my white skin or complete ineptitude with the language. I tend to question customs, and though the religious totems are cool to look at, I’m not really much of a believer.

I did further confirm two universal truths while visiting the various temples, shrines, and other paraphernalia. I’m borrowing from George Carlin here, who noted many years ago that God is good, God is great, God is all-powerful and all-knowing… he just needs your money. This seems to be true no matter your religious affiliation, and/or which god or gods you’re worshipping. See my temple? Two hundred yen, please. Want God to curry luck in your favor? Five hundred yen. Want even more good luck? Keep the yen comin’.

Second universal truth?

Banksy had this one 15 years ago: Exit through the gift shop. No matter how sincere and authentic the shrine or temple there always seemed to be some trinkets for purchase at the end, no doubt touting the sincerity and authenticity of your experience.

But it’s not all a tacky gift shop. There really is nature and beauty and all that, definitely worth the few yen I had to put down every so often. When I first arrived in Kyoto I just called it Tokyo without the skyscrapers, but beyond the cement (and sometimes hidden within it) you’ll find gardens and greenspaces worthy of awe. For the most part they’ve kept the Starbucks away from these places, though sometimes I appreciate a Starbucks on every corner.

I’m honestly not sure who’s in charge of the coffee around here, but whether inspired by Starbucks or not, they know what they’re doing. That’s something I found all over Japan. They take great care in what they do, no matter what it is. That stereotype is also valid, foodwise and otherwise. On the culinary side of things I can say we had delicious local items in every place we visited. (My son was especially enamored of that, and his blog can tell you more.) And sure, I stopped in a McDonald’s too just to check it out. Milky pie? A hamburger with actual ham on it? And what was that sauce?

The actual Japanese food was kind of off the charts and now I’m spoiled. Once you’ve had actual Japanese cuisine you don’t go back to Benihana’s.

There were three cities on our tour: Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hakone. You can hear about them on future episodes of Math and Musings, but here’s a sneak peek.

Tokyo’s a big city. Literally. It was the most Western, the most white, and the most English-friendly of all the places we went. Maybe I just stuck to the places that cater to clueless American tourists, but for the most part it was no trouble to get around and communicate. I’m glad we went here first, because the other cities may have been a challenge at the beginning. It was the sheer size of Tokyo that was intimidating, not the language barrier, though I understand five years ago it might have been different. The locals say that the English signs went up when they had the Olympics here in 2021, and between those and Google translate the fact that I knew practically zero Japanese wasn’t an issue. Their version of Uber is called Go, and is pretty user friendly, even for a clueless American tourist. The license plates use Arabic numerals (those are the ones we use, by the way), and most Japanese people at least know the numbers zero to nine in English. They’re also familiar with credit cards. Education isn’t the great equalizer; plastic is the great equalizer. (Think The Graduate, not Horace Mann.)

Among other things I saw in Tokyo? Three-dimensional billboards (not quite Back to the Future but getting there), a giant Godzilla head, and retail, retail, retail. This is why you bring an empty suitcase with you: you’re leaving with souvenirs.

We did stop our shopping adventure to experience some culture in the most American way possible.

We went to Disney World.

Well, not Disney World but Tokyo DisneySea, a subsidiary of the Disney corporation on the scenic shore of Tokyo Bay. It’s basically the stereotype thing but with Disney: take every Japanese stereotype you have and paste it on top of every Disney/Pixar/Lucasfilm trope you can name. Indiana Jones shouting in Japanese? Awesome. A few miles down the road at Universal Studios Japan (did that too) we found the same thing: the worlds of Jurassic Park, Jaws, and Harry Potter with twists of Japan. And then there was the EPCOT-like versions of New York and San Francisco… their stereotypes of us! Hilarious. Fair’s fair I guess. I did love how much they played up both Nintendo (obvious) and Charlie Brown (not so obvious), because yeah, I guess nothing says America like video games and Charlie Brown.

Theme parks and big buildings were fun, of course, but I live on the east coast of the United States, and these things aren’t exactly unusual. Hakone, however? Can’t get that here.

Hidden somewhere between cities and mountains lies the resort oasis of Hakone. On the podcast I refer to it as the kind of place where a Bond villain would have his lair, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. To get to the hotel we took two trains, one ferry, one “ropeway” (it was actually a cable car), one thing they called a “cable car” (I’d call it a tram), and finally a shuttle bus. If it was all unnecessary and they were just trying to confuse us, it worked. I’d never find my way back. I was half expecting to learn a secret handshake or sign an NDA or some such thing, but no, all I had to do was undress.

Onsen is the Japanese word for hot springs and the traditional baths and inns they accompany. I’d never been to one, probably because I’ve lived in the United States my whole life (so far). You really do have to enter the springs nude, and there’s no way you could ever get away with this in the states. They do separate by gender, though I should note there were only two options, again meaning we could never get away with this in the states. Our loss, because the Japanese onsen is a classy way to unwind. Interesting that unlike many of the other places we visited, which were obviously catering to American tourists, the onsen at Hakone Kowakien Ten-yu had a more native appeal. Domestic tourism, they call it, with visitors from all over Japan. I figured if this is where actual Japanese people were vacationing we were onto something, like when you find that latenite restaurant that all the chefs go to after work, or the afterhours club filled with musicians after their gigs.

It dawned on me that “domestic tourism” is kind of what I’ve been doing the last 43 years of my life. Or rather, the first 43 years of my life. I really do like seeing America, seeing it first as the old phrase goes, but I do like branching out a bit too. It’s nice to travel and see things and do things and have experiences and step out of your comfort zone from time to time. (We did take the bullet train, for example, but I was too nervous to try the bidet setting on my toilet.) You’ll find things that are the same, things that are different, and things that are delicious. I was happy I got to go with a few of my friends, and I got to make some friends along the way as well.

Was this my favorite journey of all time?

Of course. As always it made my top two: this one and the next one.

Where to?

Stay tuned.