With the wide range of personalities and backgrounds in this forum, I'm interested to hear what everyone's first experience was when they first came to Japan. This is inspired by a comment AlwaysAisle made in the train thread. I first entered Japan in the late 90s, based on what I've read, I'm younger than a lot of you (mid 40s) who shared experiences riding trains in the 70s and early 80s, so you got to see Japan during a different time even further separated from technology than I was. Maybe a dumb post, but I'm really interested in hearing your experiences.

My first time was a bit funny for me, I was a young dumb Army Sergeant, just got off a World Airways flight from LAX (DC-10 I believe?) through a layover at Yakota AIr Base, then on to Okinawa. I was picked up after my first very uncomfortable overseas flight and driven to my barracks at Fort Buckner between Chatan and Kita-nakagusuku (southeastish side of Camp Foster). I had almost no sleep but decided to go for a walk as I couldn't get over the excitement of being in a new foreign land. I walked in to a San-A, bought a bottle of jasmine ice tea, then walked down the main road, looked over and saw what appeared to be a dog driving a small bongo truck. I thought I was either dreaming or hallucinating. My mind couldn't figure out why a dog was sitting in the driver seat of this truck driving down the road. Then after a few minutes, it hit me, that the steering wheels were on the other side (I had no idea). Of the years I lived in Japan, I made lots of friends, and have lots of great memories over 10 yen Kirin beer, sake, karaoke, Goya Champuru, and CoCo Ichibanya, but that experience, as trivial as it is, will always be burned in to my mind in vivid detail.