It's still a clean and orderly society. The people are great, for the most part. The food is great. The society is conservative in a good way. I guess the "being decades behind" works both ways. Not good for IT. But good for social cohesion and common sense. It's also a country with a lot of natural beauty and blessed with many natural resources such as rice, fruit, fish. The government is weaker than its G7 counterparts, again in a good way. There was no lockdown in Japan during covid--they couldn't legally do it. There was no vaccine or mask mandate. Now, as it happened, most people went along with both masks and vaccines, but the point was nobody was forced to. Cash is also still widely used here. You can withdraw 3000USD worth of JPY from the ATM and nobody bats an eyelid. You can pay in cash everywhere. There is no nonsense laws on maximum cash transactions like Europe. The trains, buses and planes all run on time. The police are reasonable, for the most part. Also there is always a feeling like Japan could be back any day now. Just waiting for a few things to click and who knows. Probably not going to happen, but at least there is the hope.