The centre of tokyo is actually surprisingly old or simply ful of businesses, the younger people tend to live further out, with most of the people living around, ie Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa.

though alcohol is again prohibitively expensive
Its on par, maybe cheaper than Australia atm, we have alot of taxes on alcohol.

I agree with alot of whats written. While some women do get fair treatment there is still a way to go, the women still have the job of serving tea at meetings, which is probably more of a carry-over from tradition or simply a assistant/secretary type role than anything else.

Having lived in both outer chiba and saitama, and seeing the large amounts of area free i still dont get why people get more land. In Australia its not unusual for people to get double blocks and build larger houses and still have gardens, or just build a larger house and not have a garden.

You might see chauvinism in japan but I regard people to be very equal.
Something that annoys me here is not so much that chauvinism exists but people make it exist. Simple things like school uniforms try to push differences between the sexes, split classes for things like home ec and PE. To have equality you need to treat people the same regardless of anything, and by intergrating at the lower levels it will have an impact further on in life. Do they split the classes into male and female for sports in England and America?