>>196809
>i noticed the same when watching vlogs from japan. zoomed in irl its not as pretty
Right? I went to a cultural event/training thing for foreigners where only another two people turned up. It was in a rented room in some shitty building where there were some escort pubs (the event had nothing to do with that). The thing is, the hosts behaved it was the most normal thing. Like the venue we rented was totally appropriate. It's like you can see the sanitized pieces of the experience they pick out when depicting it in anime and they obviate everything else that sticks out like a sore thumb to us. IDK if that makes sense. It's difficult to explain if you haven't experienced it.

At one point I was in a crowded event with other foreigners, and I experienced the anime trope of the couple that gets separated by a torrent of people as if it was a river. I've seen that scene a hundred times in anime, but only after the fact I realized what I had experienced (especially in Tokyo crowds seemed to move in relentless streams). Over the span of my stay there I realized most of the tropes in anime that seem so characteristic to us outside of Japan are actually taken from IRL situations that at the time look nothing like the anime depictions.