Points of interest

A couple things that I noticed in my trip back to Canada-things that you might not notice when you first come here but are very clear when you go back.

1. Japan's trains are all amazingly clean compared to the Toronto subway. You will not find a single spec of garbage on a Japanese train or subway. This is not because they hire people to clean up the garbage either. People here are far more concious about littering (on trains anyways) and respect the space of others.
2. Japan in the winter is cold, Canada is far colder. I'm usually fairly warm in my winter jacket in Japan but when when I brought it to Canada it wasn't nearly warm enough.
3. North Americans buy cell phones slightly larger than an electron, Japanese buy cellphones slightly smaller than a small brick. I suspect the reason for this is that the Japanese text on their keitai like it's going out of style. I rarely actually talk on the phone-all text.
4. Compared to Japan, Toronto's streets seemed wide-open, empty, sterile and scary to me. I never liked Japan's winding, crooked, narrow streets teeming with people but now I see that it has a lot more personality than the 4-lane highways we call streets.
5. I can't understand either english or japanese! When ordering food at Subway I had to get them to repeat the questions multiple times before I could understand-quite similar to what I have to do in Japan!
6. Japanese really do dress more stylishly. Ok I will give Canada the benefit of the doubt because it was relatively cold during the period I was there and I do realize that when it comes to being stylish and goodlooking or being warm and bleh, intelligent people will choose warmth.
7. Torontonians in February are very intelligent. Take that how you will.