Originally Posted by hijiji

My first time in Japan was the summer of 1984. Landed in Narita and was shocked by the heat and humidity. Arrived for a 6 month university exchange program. Picked up by a couple of Japanese friends who were studying at the same university and drove to Yokohama, where I would be staying. No air-conditioning in the car and just urban sprawl like I had never seen. We were going to stop by their favorite coffee shop to drink Calpis to cool down. They kept going on about how Japanese love Calpis and often drink it in summer. I had never heard of it before and was just hearing 'cow piss' in my head. I thought maybe I had made the wrong decision to study in Japan! It was a great time. Was the height of the bubble era, I was a poor college student with dollars, the yen was about 260 to the dollar, so for me everything seemed so cheap, and it was like a bubble for me, too.