Best Of

Understanding Japanese Society by Joy Hendry. Ruth Benedict - The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

But Wikipedia is your friend. You can dive down the rabbit hole by following different threads. I would recommend reading about the 47 Ronin (Wikipedia is fine). You can even go to the Sengakuji temple where they are buried. Know who Ieyasu Tokugawa was and what he did.

Diving into the Pacific war is another rabbit hole but it might help you understand the reasons for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. I visited the Yasukuni Shrine where the war dead are enshrined but that may not be to your taste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine

The Japanese are very polite and don't like to say "no". You have to recognize that they are never going to do what you asked if they don't want to - but they won't tell you.

Let's suppose you said to your Japanese friend, "You don't want to go to a movie this evening, do you?" They would reply "Yes" meaning they don't want to go. Always confused me.

Japanese children are taught empathy almost from birth. When a Japanese driver stops behind another car at a stop light, they will turn their headlights off so that they don't shine into the car in front of them. A Japanese person is always thinking about what you need and are thinking of when they are talking with you. Very different from some Americans who go on a monolog about themselves and never ask anything about the other person

If you ride on the subway, the Japanese passengers won't look at you. But as a Japanese friend said, "Yes, but they see you." meaning they will check you out.

Japanese men used to go drinking after work with their work buddies. The subways shut down at midnight so if they didn't make the last train, there were "capsule hotels" (also known as "pod hotels") that were essentially tubes with a mattress. A cheap place for the drunk businessman to spend the night. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel There are also "love hotels" in most big cities where a room is rented by the hour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel . But many of the patrons of love hotels were married couples. Japanese homes are very small, so a love hotel gives the couple some time to be together in private.

You may see a homeless person in Tokyo. They will have built a small shelter from cardboard to sleep in and the area around the shelter will be clean.

Try to stay one night at a Ryokan (pronounced yo-can - the Japanese can't do Rs). A Ryokan is a traditional Japanese hotel. The room will have tatami mats and you'll sleep under a futon. They may even give you those uncomfortable bean pillows. Highly recommended. Try to get out of your American bubble.

Try Sukiyaki at a Japanese restaurant. The Japanese don't use spoons to eat miso soup. They just slup it from the bowl, and use chopsticks. If the meal includes some edamame, remember that you don't eat the pod. You just pop the beans out of the pod into your mouth. Try to participate in a tea ceremony.

Watch the movie "Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurosawa before you go. The movie starts off very slowly - and it has subtitles - which puts off western audiences who crave action. But it's consistently rated as one of the best movies ever made. Western movie makers copied Kurosawa's movies. For example, "The Magnificent Seven" is Seven Samurai moved to the western US. Many of the Eastwood spaghetti western are copies of Kurosawa’s movies. There are other good Japanese directors but Kurosawa is a good place to start.

[Ikiru is another good Kurosawa movie. Very different from Seven Samurai.]

There's so much more.