• convenience stores
• snack foods
• soba
• the subway
• trains
• riding the shinkansen early in the morning
• kids riding double on their friends’ bikes
• electronics
• Muji
• Uniqlo
• pretty yen bills
• feeling tall
• everything seeming new and interesting, all the time
• incense wafting through the air as I walk past a temple and graveyard
• Hirose-gawa
• the Date Masamune statue in Sendai Station
• cell phones
• Engrish
• the world’s friendliest and most earnest customer service
• all the people I met here

So long, and thanks for all the fish! So ends my saga in Japan…