TwistedMac said:
it might seem so to the untrained eye...
My eye is not untrained, grasshopper. I have visited Japan three times.
but anyways... many from these boards have gone insane from the waiting (me included) and the longer it takes the more we want to go there for no apparent reason.. so now it's no longer "just a place"... it's a place full of mystery and stuff....
It's a place full of the same stuff places anywhere are full of.
don't worry, we wont be dissapointed once we get there, it'll be sort of like those people that believe in horoscopes.. they manage to find stuff that makes the horoscope "true"... we'll also manage to find our fantasies in japan.. they might just seem very plain to anyone else ^^
No, you won't be disappointed once you get here. That will come several months or years later.
All generalizations are bad, including this one, but it is my opinion that one's opinion of Japan will never be more favorable than when they have never been here or have been here only a very short time. The longer you remain, the more you come to know the place, the less favorable one's opinion will become.
I liken it to one's favorable opinion of Japan being water in a glass that is brimming full. You have the glass when you get here, and if you are very careful, you can move around and maintain 100% of the water that was in it originally. But every time some fresh revelation about Japan jostles or jars you, a bit sloshes out, never to be replaced.
I could tell you that over the decades there has been no shortage of foreigners who come here starry-eyed over the place, only to become quite embittered and leave Japan absolutely despising the place and many (if not most) of the people in it a short year or two later. I could tell you, but anybody who hasn't seen the scene played out over and over would never believe it. It is the rare foreigner who leaves after a year or two (and very very few ever bother to stay much beyond that, normally being totally burned out on the place by then) still just as much enamored of the place as when they came....or enamored at all, for that matter.