Another two days in Japan since I last wrote, and the beginning of my fourth day in Japan. I have to say that I am beginning to understand the basics of Japanese culture and their common sense.
It is probably premature for me to state this, but I am starting to like Japanese culture as a whole. There is a lot I can talk about everything about the culture, but it can be boiled to how they treat interactions both formal and informal. While I understood from anecdotes and other people's experiences that Japan is known as a very polite culture, I didn't understood the depth of this courtesy across their culture. Everyone here appears (emphasis on appears) to value hard work and going "above and beyond" and this clearly shows in the world they have created around them. They value the small details of everything they do and make, which I experience from how they pack shopping bags to the way they handle money. I can understand now why Japan created so many innovations that required large amounts of precision and quality, their culture allows them to pay attention to these details at a depth that I have not seen in other cultures.
That being said, I am also getting a perspective on the cost of this quality. I see that the Japanese people have to work very hard to maintain this culture and their relative lack of inflexibility and pride in their culture makes them understandably inflexible in the international scene. This shows up in their international politics with topics such as the Senkaku Islands which is quite a stalemate as neither Japan or China are willing to approach a compromise.
Enough with all of the analysis and social science. All I really have to say right now is that I am enjoying my time in Japan quite a bit and learning quite a bit about Japanese culture and about myself through that lense. I can't wait to see what's the rest of the year brings into my perspective.