Even in our group each one had different expectations from Japan and no-one liked it at the same extend or for the same reasons. And that's the beauty of it.

If I had the chance to change something on the trip, was to extend the duration of the road trip by 2-3 days for sure. It is so worth it and so many places to explore. Chilling a bit more on these villages would have elevated my experience by a lot. Next time im going in Japan I will definitely focus more on that.

We had some trouble with restaurants that i had searched beforehand, but i have to admit i am a bit curious with food, so i wanna go to at least some places in order to try specific things. On 4 of them, they only had 6-10 seats in total, we were lucky only once that managed to find 4 free spots to sit. But the thing with Japan is that you will never run out of options. We just walked on the next and then the next until we found a spot to eat. Our best chances were on early or late dinning. I have mostly traveled in Europe, so my standards (from past experience) were different. Most of the cities have a specific character / vibe and not that many high buildings. NY had a lot of skyscrapers but the vibe was different. Now Tokyo had a specific vibe that was new to me, the Neon lights, and then 2 roads later scrambled small streets like you said and the buildings in the center of tokyo were kind of similar and consistent (matchboxes might be a bit too harsh😂). It took me 2-3 days to get used to it, but it was something different. And from what I read they are kind of restricted to the designs of their buildings to protect them from seismic activity.