Japan is expensive
Of course that depends of current exchange rates, but as said before in general things of every day life are rather cheap and you always get good value for what you pay.
Everyone is in martial arts
Most people like Baseball and Soccer has become rather popular for watching as well as playing it themselves. Of course people do practice martial arts, expecially young people consider it as something folkloric though and prefer western things.
The 18 something ways of separating your waste
Basically you have two main categories, which are “burnable” and “unburnable waste. Then there is cans together with bottles and if you have a lot of it: paper. Confusion starts when time enters the calculation. You have to put out different kinds of garbage at different days of the week. Furthermore you're supposed to put the garbage-bag outside no more than one or two hours before the garbage truck arrives in the morning (most people nevertheless do it on the evening before). Eventually that means you either dispose bags half empty or you end up storing them in your flat.In a land where everything is meant to be practical, waste separation probably is a most unnecessarily complicated matter.
Subway intervals of 1-2 minutes and subway stuffing people into subway cars
Notorious Marunouchi-Line knows intervals of about 2 minutes for a period of 10 minutes at around 8 o'clock, the rest of the day and on practically every other line you have intervals of about 5min or more.
I never experienced the stuffing staff myself, not even early in the morning, but I got reports on it. What's common: the last two (usually guys) entering a full car step in turned around, pushing the crowd further into the compartment with their backs. Only those are definitely not paid for their “service”.
Tokyo is not Japan
Certainly it's different from the countryside, just like every large town is to the province. Only, regarding word largest town, you expect something like internationality... Wrong! There might be a lot of foreigners, but what about some hundred thousand in between 20 millions? And no one is speaking english!
Japanese can't say no
In fact to be polite, you have to avoid a direct negation. Nonetheless there is a word for no and it is used. You even can express dissent. But only to weaken a compliment received.
Mangas are read from right to left
In fact this is correct: Only that any printed matter is read from right to left, including books and newspapers. So mangas aren't something special.
