Landscape

Since Japan is an island, every piece of land is precious and unlike in the United States where developers can just pass over unfavorable terrain, Japan needs every foot (meter?) that they can get their hands on.

As a result, you get these steep hilly streets that make San Francisco seems like prairie lands, which can be awesome or horrible for bike riders depending on which way they are travelling.

The sudden change in the height of the road can be so dramatic that I've seen houses where you can enter the front door at ground level, walk up the stairs to the third floor, go out the back door from the third floor and still be at ground level! Wrap your heads around that for a few seconds, I've got time. It gets really weird when you notice that the garage where they park the car is also on the third floor!

They often put up these concrete walls like seen in the picture when the slope is that steep, that is to prevent mud slides or whatever else might happen if they have a typhoon in the area. You see walls like this all over the place and I mean all over the place.

It is a lot different from cities and towns in the US where everything is basically flat and level. I've even seen parking lots in Japan that are almost at a 45 degree angle.

Parking brakes are very important around here...