English proficiency
In Tokyo i already had major problems speaking with people in english since their proficiency is not that high. This is probably also why most of the foreign workers are either english teachers or people working in IT. On my Tokaido journey i had to rely entirely on peoples patience and my basic Japanese to get around. However i felt like people in Kyoto could speak and understand more english than in Tokyo. This might also just the case because i was almost only at touristic places.
Train and Shinkansen
The train prices are, if you only consider the travel distance, comparable cheap and easily accessable. Although Tokyo consist of multiple cities ( called wards) and is quite big, you can get around fairly easy, fast and cheap. The trains which run along the tokaido trail were also quite cheap. A distance from Dresden to Leipzig would cost 21 € while the same distance would only cost 6 €. The Shinkansen on the other hand is a little bit more pricy but lightning fast. A Shinkansen ticket from Toyko to Kyoto costs around 120 € while a plane ticket would cost around 80 €. However people would still prefer the Shinkansen since it is more convinient to just hop on the train at major stations instead of going to the remote located airports with additional time consuming checkin procedure.
Green Japan
On my journey i noticed a lot of solar panels. As it seems, Japan in general does pay attention to recycling and green energy (because nuclear is not really save and they don’t want to depend on import of fossil fuels). Depending on where you live seperation of waste is quite strict and can be as many as 13 categories.
A lot of abondoned buildings
I noticed a lot of abondoned Hotels. I also heard thathat is a rather common thing and they would just leave every inventory inside the abondoned building instead of wrecking and cleaning it up.
Crying babies
I did not notice until i actually did notice. I almost never encoutnered crying children. Somehow although it is said Japanese people are always working overtime i still observed a lot of families playing in parks and almost no crying or arguing children. This might be either just a cultural thing or because they spend enough quality time together as a family that such things don’t occur.