My favourite movie of recent years is Perfect Days by Wim Wenders. It's about a middle aged man, Hirayama, who works as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. There are so many echoes of this list in his simple, daily routine.

(It's *so much* better than it sounds.)

There's some decent advice in there, but a lot of it does also kind of feel very "Place, Japan" overall — there's a lot of exoticism of things that just sort of happen to be a given way in Japan. Like there aren't public trash cans in most places, so instead people either use convenience store trash cans, or engage in the ancient Japanese art of gomakashi by placing litter on top of things, with the philosophy of "it doesn't count as littering if it doesn't touch the ground."

A lot of it also feels disconnected from, like, actual Japanese society? Like people LOOOOOOVE fast fashion in Japan. Shein is huge, and secondhand clothing stores are everywhere because people are constantly buying clothes they don't actually want for very long.

There's some legitimately useful advice in there, to be certain ("always bring a gift" feels pretty universally beloved across borders), but a lot of it also feels like some combination of "I just got back from nearly three weeks in Japan and now I am an expert on Japanese society" and "self-help book with a title that's just a generic Japanese word, trying to sell an idea along the lines that, say, the word "erotica" means "entertainment meant for prurient enjoyment, but deeper and more meaningful."

So, well, I guess if you don't mind the fact that a lot of it doesn't apply to actual real-life Japan (the reason why they had to start to make announcements not to talk on your phone on trains is because of Japanese people, after all), there's some potentially worthwhile advice in there!