I visited Tokyo in January and none of the stations seemed old. I think I had one particular dank, cavernous station in mind when I wrote that post All of the stations on the Yamanote line seem new and clean to me. I did the TeamLabs thing and it is pretty cool. I also went to Tokyo Tower.

I also visited Okinawa. The main island is more interesting. Okinawa  is an interesting place to visit but public transportation options are limited and you have to rent a car. Everyone drives really slowly and there is no parking in Naha. The Okinawans are definitely more laid-back. I didn't notice much of a US military presence besides da few military trucks that were parked behind a chain link fence. I've followed an Okinawan independence activist named Robert Kajiwara for years. He complains about how Okinawans are horribly discriminated against by Japanese and abused by US military personnel. I didn't notice anything like that but I was only there for five days.

I walked into  a Pachinko Parlour at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday and it was packed with men in their 20s and 30s playing slot machines. It was so depressing that I decided to leave.

That's because they weren't able to use Draftkings or Fanduel like Americans

What is surprising and I didn't really appreciate until my second visit is how foreign workers are the life blood of Japan. In Tokyo, at least half of the restaurants I went to had at least one foreign worker and half of the convenience store employees are foreigners.

A woman from the Department of Tourism was doing surveys with tourists in the Okinawa's Naha Airport. I am impressed with the actions the government is taking to make travel in Japan as enjoyable as possible.