Necro post, but I was in the UK at the time of writing

Back near Ikebukuro now and am a frequent visitor of many authentic restaurants :) It’s often funny as the staff don’t even speak Japanese in some of these places xD

So am I to expect 1000円 bottles in the summer?

Went back for a bit and at first it was great, especially: “I can talk to people in my native language!”

But it didn’t last long before I was missing my 麻婆豆腐 🤣

I’ve lost my system!

1000 – おしゃれ男

5000 — 女

10000 – お祖父さん

My family went wild with messages – yet I didn’t feel a thing in Tokyo

I can identify with what the OP was feeling

Flying back home and at Heathrow I honestly thought “why is everyone fat?” Then I got to enjoy someone’s 30 minute speakerphone call on the train’s ‘quiet coach’

Reminds me of my first weeks in Japan…

I took my Kona Private Jake with me (nowhere near that bike, but $2-3k) which I would expect to be gone in an instant in the UK. I kept placed my bike on the balcony of the monthly apartment in Roppongi, which was only on the 2nd floor, and would check it at night as I thought someone would nick it

This shortly progressed to leaving it outside when going to the conbini, etc

a native RAR app

It better come with a “Trial Expired” pop-up or I am not using it

From the generation before this, I always thought the “mobile generation”'s computer savviness had been overrated. Mobile phones (especially iOS) are like a walled garden compared to using a PC and Windows. It was easy to shoot yourself in the foot on Windows 98, etc so you learnt to be careful very quickly. Likewise, there’s no jumping into the registry or terminal, no built in zip/rar handling, warnings from the OS, built in Malware protection, etc

The internet was a wild place in the 90s and this generation never really experienced that. Forums had lax moderation and could be full of troll links to “I am an idiot”, goatse, etc. Files could be hosted on random webpages and the downloads could contain anything: often a virus alongside the actual file, etc

I remember not using an antivirus as Norton and co would crush your machine, so you just had to tread extremely carefully