Japan is often portrayed as a country where ancient temples and ladies in kimono elegantly coexist with cutting-edge technologies, crazy robots, and cyberpunk-inspiring cityscapes. But the technologies are mostly “hard-ware”: you may indeed find all those neon billboards on Shibuya crossing, decorative robots in hotel lobbies, and iPads instead of menus in restaurants, but many shops and most transportation services still don’t accept credit cards (forget the contactless payments!), any kind of medical or governmental service requires a pile of filled out paper forms, taxi or food delivery apps didn’t get popular yet, and Google Maps oftentimes lead you to the most unoptimized path possible. Convenience stores are still the main venues where you can pay your bills, book event tickets, and buy food instantly — functions that are now largely being shifted online in Europe. Oshamambe town's convenience store also seems to be the only place where it's possible to socialize and get warm in winter.

Local trains + night + snow + 5 Centimeters per Second soundtrack is a heart-wrecking combination. 10/10 would recommend.

An amazingly Russian-looking house in Hakodate. Brick and plaster facades are a rare sight in Japan due to frequent earthquakes and summer humidity (Hokkaido is better than the main island but still the cracks here illustrate the problem pretty well).