"When people abroad think about Japan, they very often latch onto the more unusual and elaborate aspects of Japanese culture -- swords and seppuku, Noh theatre, geisha, anime and Zen. Yet for me, Japan is most interesting and beguiling when it is at its most ordinary and everyday. It is the daily life of my neighbourhood -- the little shops, the people going to and fro on bikes, the children playing in the small dusty parks -- that I love most about life in Japan. It's very hard to convey what is so attractive about this very ordinariness in words or on screen."

Edging Toward Japan: Japan's extraordinary pursuit of the ordinary - The Mainichi

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250612/p2a/00m/0op/016000c