After living in Japan for a while it's a bit too easy to focus on the negatives here. To me it seems that's because many of them impact on day to day living. It's like forgetting to enjoy your health until you get sick. So in a bid to accentuate the positive, I'll resort to talking about something that almost every foreigner who leaves Japan will tell you they miss: the food.
The small company I work for has a list of regular lunch haunts, and we work through them every week or so in quasi-random fashion. Occasionally we try something new, but straying from the list is often an invitation for disappointment. Not disappointment western-style though, where a bad meal can really put a crimp in your day. Bad food here is like above-average food elsewhere. Mostly Japanese food is of excellent quality, which is one reason why Japanese usually stick to Japanese food when travelling.
For most people, sushi immediately comes to mind when talking about Japanese food. And it is common. Satoko is pictured above at a kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurant near my apartment, unloading the sushi for our table (number 41). This place is pretty big, hence the intercoms used to order dishes. In a smaller, more traditional kaiten-zushi, the chefs would be in the middle of the loop, taking orders, making and handing the sushi directly to customers.
Sushi is served cold, though the rice may be still warm if the chef has just prepared it. Washed down with a bowl of crab or shellfish soup, it makes a surprisingly hearty winter lunch. Because there are many types, and you choose the sequence of dishes, sushi maintains a lasting variety that has me hooked.
