Japan’s capital city of Tokyo is a sprawling mass of concrete, asphalt and steel that holds 35 million people in its greater metropolitan area (the city itself including three surrounding prefectures), which is slightly less than the population of California. Because there are so many people living in close proximity, things are a little different in Tokyo compared with most other parts of the world. I’d never been in a McDonald’s with multiple floors until I came to Japan, but in Tokyo it’s quite common to see fast food restaurants with three stories, with the ground floor for the kitchen and two floors for patrons to eat on. Family restaurants are often built with the parking lots occupying the ground level and the restaurant essentially raised up on stilts allowing the cars to fit under the building, while convenience stores with apartments built over them for the owners to live in are common, too. The idea of “personal space” doesn’t mean much in Tokyo, whether it’s trying to squeeze behind the tiny tables at a coffee shop or traveling on a train so packed that breathing becomes difficult. J-List is located in a fairly small city about 100 km from Tokyo, so we’re spared much of the stress of having too many people around us. But even our spacious city is quite different from back home, something I’m reminded of whenever I stop at the train station for a bowl of tachi-kui soba, the “stand-and-eat noodles” that are consumed while standing at a counter, since there’s no room for seats in the tiny restaurant.
