I've never seen so much traffic on Tokyo streets as that day ... I recall seeing a packed bus stuck in non-moving traffic. And a nearby expressway was a traffic jam until 3am.
I didn't think to take pictures.

Japan even has "eki-ben", which are bento you buy on the platform, often made with local specialities ... plus beer (or can tea/coffee) from vending machines.

And, yeah, sandwich prices and quality in France or Germany - and their workers have healthcare and other benefits.

You just need whitespace that's the width of the digit "0" (most fonts have all the digits the same width so that they will line up).
CSS 'ch' or 'figure space', U+2007 or  

If you really want syncretism, go to Japan, where Christmas celebrations also include "Christmas cake" (a kind of strawberry shortcake) and KFC.
(Buddhist-Shinto syncretism has been around for about 1400 years; it's not unusual to see a small Shinto shrine on a Buddhist temple's grounds)

I had a credit that expired at 12:00pm on May 15; customer service couldn't tell me whether it was May 15 at 00:00, 12:00 or May 16 at 00:00. (They also couldn't tell me whether it was my local time or corporate HQ time)

And there should be a special place reserved for whoever popularized 01:30pm.

You can thank the pagan Germans for Christmas trees. (And whoever decided that Christmas should be around the winter solstice)

I missed the memo about how to suppress beeps and buzzes from apps (every app thinks it's terribly important and it's tiresome to make each app shut up) ... what's the secret?

Reading other people's code is usually a sobering experience, although every now and then it's a delightful experience.

L, O, Y have wrong values also. And my Scrabble game has a different font.

I have heard from usually reliable sources that the migration of Hotmail to Windows Server ended up with ~2x the number of machines compared to the Unix version, and took years (also required a lot of enhancements to Windows Server).

I recall reading "Mathematics for the Million" by Lancelot Hogben in middle school (and, no, it wasn't our textbook, which I've long ago forgotten).

... to pass the entrance test. Ōsaka keigo is even more complicated than standard Japanese keigo, and bowing is just a part of keigo ...

After living in Osaka for a year and returning to Vancouver, I signed up for a university Japanese language course. To check my ability, the prof asked me to translate a simple sentence and I started asking my relationship to the speaker and the subject and that was enough ...

Years ago, I found myself bowing while talking on a red public telephone and realized that I needed to get out of the country for a while.

Germany and Japan were democracies before WW2? Partial democracies, I suppose, and unstable enough that the Great Depression in Germany and some assassinations in Japan led to fascism. (Having a parliament isn't enough - Iran and Russia have parliaments and elections)

こんなに違う！日本とモンゴルの流鏑馬　両国の競演は「最初で最後でしょう」　福岡市の神社で披露 YouTube video by RKB毎日放送NEWS

Archery without all the modern gizmos. Just an English long bow or Mongolian recurve or Japanese bow. For extra interest, do it on horseback youtu.be/Uz3F1QaxQoA

Vancouver BC and Palo Alto CA both have an Alma Street ... which the Americans pronounce as if it's written All-mah/Oll-mah (to my ear, anyway). A Venezuelan told me that my Vancouverite pronunciation (Al-ma, with both "a"s the same - short, like in "acid") was very close to correct.

American "hot" and "hat" surprised me - in my dialect they're very distinct.

Osaka says hello
mstdn.tokyocameraclub.com/@tokyocamera...

Are you indoors or outdoors? (Forced air heating dehumidifies)

Japanese and German build sentences with lots of subordinate clauses ... and I saw students in my Japanese and German courses having similar problems to what your Latin students have.

I learned English grammar when I took a German course.

Except that half the answers on StackOverflow are wrong, out of date, or poor style. (On Microsoft websites, they're just poor style.)

If a lot of copy-pasting is needed, that shows a broken API design. It's nice if "AI" can help with the copy-pasting but it would be even nicer if the design were fixed.
(Same comment for "coding wizards", which Microsoft seems to like, because they seldom allow "round tripping".)

And I thought I was being original. :)

(Although at my university, there were a number of Maths courses that were explicitly tailored for Physics and Engineering students)
(There was also a Philosophy course that I took for Maths credit)

“What I said was, ‘Is anybody at home?'” called out Pooh very loudly.

“No!” said a voice; and then added, “You needn’t shout so loud. I heard you quite well the first time.”

-- AA Milne, Winnie The Pooh

You mean that Physics isn't just applied Maths, and Engineering isn't just applied Physics, and Commerce isn't just applied Arithmetic? (HCI, I presume, would be applied Psychology)
The argument can cut both ways; at some universities, there's an "Applied Maths" sub-department of Maths.

(I used to teach Defensive Driving in Canada and the mantra was that almost all so-called accidents are preventable)
(And driving under the speed limit doesn't mean not driving too fast for conditions)

And "the cyclists (or pedestrian) suddenly appeared in front of me), as if it's not the job of the driver to be aware of the surroundings?
(When I was in taxis in Japan, I noticed the drivers watching out for bikes on the sidewalks ... Japan's liability laws don't presume innocence)

They think they’re going to vibe code Mastercard? Doordash? They think the ability to wave a small plastic rectangle almost anywhere in the world and be loaned a car is just about some code?

Come on. Fraud, compliance, infrastructure, etc. etc.
bsky.app/profile/rupe...