I'm talking red, blue, etc.

What do you mean? That you wish there were smaller notes? Or that 1000 is too small for a note and that it too should be a coin?

I love that you're allowed to cycle on the pavement, so much safer sometimes!

I hate the pressure on women to be skinny and perfect. I know the UK is pretty awful for that as well, but I've seen magazine articles lauding that some girl dropped from 100 pounds to 87 (and ended up underweight!), and a lot of REALLY skinny girls thinking that they're fat. I don't like feeling like I am obligated to put on make-up just to be dressed for the day, rather than just because I fancy wearing it.

Well that can't be right.

So you want to wear shoes into your Japanese home?

Hmmm...

I too love the cash using culture and the collecting culture. Imust say t&e highlight though, is the language. I love seeing it, hearing it, and of course speaking it! :D

As for hate, I hate futons with a passion... I also can't stand Japanese food AT ALL... sorry guys :L
Seriously, my diet only consisted of Ramen and Chicken Curry during my ENTIRE stay lol
I'm just an extremely fussy eater

No, but the fact that the idea of simply wearing shoes in A home is barbaric to them is something I don't agree with. Japan historically tends to have a lot of arrogance with high culture.

I hate that. Many American cities have dedicated lanes to cycle in, and it's much more efficient than a biker trying to plow through a crown of people on their sidewalk. Nothing more annoying than the ringing of a bell and screech of tires behind me because I'm supposed to move out of the way of a cycler on the sideWALK.

Yeah, that is a bit confusing. I wish the 500 and 100 were also bills, or at least just the 500.

Barbaric? Arrogant? I think your words are little extreme here.

In the West we don't tend to sit on the floor. Our butts and hands are always 3 feet above the floor... Therefore there isn't a need to take off shoes.

However if you have tatami mats on your floor, where you sit, sleep, place your hands, etc. The last thing you want is any more dirt that is necessary getting into your tatami mats.

Makes perfect sense to me, and I know more people than not that move back from Japan and maintain that custom (yours truly included).

I don't think so. From the times of adopting chopsticks because eating with hands or silverware like the West was considered savage, to the closing of the nation to free itself from the "impurities" of other lands, to modern society where xenophobia still runs rampant. Where I've sat in classes and had discussions where people were trying to convince me that Japanese are "special" and are completely different from all other people.

Save for the fact that tatami can rip, your argument about sitting at a table versus sitting on the floor with shoes is bullshit. No need to take off shoes in a house because you're sitting in a chair? What if your house is all white carpet? And also if that were the case, you would have gone back home and continued to resume wearing shoes in your house rather than adopting the Japanese way, because I'm sure you're back to sitting in chairs again.

America has, almost everywhere, MUCH wider streets, compared to a lot of Japanese neighbourhoods. Also not all Japanese streets have pavements, so peds share the road with cars and cycles, so why not let cycles share with peds? Japanese people seem to manage it just fine. Besides, if a car swipes into the cycle lane and smacks a cyclist it's going to do a hell of a lot more damage than if a cyclist is an idiot and swipes a pedestrian.