Japan seems to loom very large in the collective travel consciousness somehow. There are plenty of other expensive destinations on the planet, for example, but mention you're going to Japan and you can expect to see people's eyes widen like stop-signs as they contemplate the likely costs.

Having arrived here, I have to wonder if some of this collective horror is an overreaction, as Japan is not actually as hideously expensive as certain other places on the globe. Compared to London and Scandinavia, for instance, it appears to be cheaper for backpacking and daily costs.

So something about Japan grabs our attention and makes it lodge firmly in our minds, taking on Godzilla-like proportions whether they're warranted or not.

Sitting on the plane on the way over from Taipei, I decided to poke around in the corners of my mind to see what had lodged there in the 'Japan' pocket. I wrote the list hurriedly because I realised time was short. In half an hour, I would no longer be a person who'd 'never been to Japan', and I would never be able to decide what things I'd known before coming, and what knowledge I'd acquired after.

The Japan pocket in my brain looked like this:

vending machines
porn
train groping
taxi drivers in white gloves with lace seat covers
schoolkids' immaculate uniforms
curious mix of hyper-technology & rundown crapness?
out-of-this world toilets!
over-wrapping
politeness
bowing
kimono
geisha
salarymen
indoor golf courses
capsule & love hotels
pachinko parlours
drinking
sushi
ramen
beef
tv game shows
impenetrable?

Two other Japan-isms were blinking like lighthouses in my mind, but they were more treasured recollections and less discrete ideas about Japan. Both were from my childhood, and thus had taken on mythical proportions in the way that things can when they come from a time in one's life when the whole world and its strangenesses were fresh.

The first Japan-ism was when my tiny public school organised an excursion for my class to visit the nearby 'Japanese School' in Terry Hills, Sydney. All I can remember of that day is my shock at having to take my shoes off at the door of the classroom, and my sense that this was a freaky and intriguing place. I remember we were all provided with silky sheets of white paper, jet-black ink, and bristley brushes and told to paint characters. What sort of school is this? I remember thinking, closely followed by the guilty wish that maybe my school would forget about me and leave me here in this mystery world. Most important of all, of course, is my memory of the Japanese students' pencil boxes, which were fancy plastic contraptions with bright, anime-decorated, padded outsides and myriad internal compartments and gadgets, including one small instrument which told you how your 'health' was when you pressed your warm thumbprint up against it. Could life be any cooler or more weird than this? I sincerely doubted it.

The next Japan-ism occurred just doors down from my primary school, in the house I lived in with my grandparents. My grandma answered some tentative rapping on the front door only to find a flustered-looking Japanese family on our doorstep. The parents' car had broken down and they wanted to know if they could use my grandparents' phone to call for assistance.

Of course they could, came the answer.

The rest of the day came and went, and the next day arrived. With it came a return visit from the Japanese woman. She rapped on the flyscreen door again, and this time handed my grandmother an immaculately wrapped gift. In lieu of mere paper, it had been wrapped in a timeless fabric that looked - to us - like something out of a fabric display at a museum.

Inside were nestled several gifts, all designed to tickle the recipient's fancy.

Again, memory has made the detail of the gifts themselves fade, but what remains is the sense of abiding awe that someone would turn up with such a wonderous present simply in return for having used one's phone.

We dined out on this tale for months: remember that day the Japanese woman came back with the gift? my grandma and I would ask each other.

It was as though someone had delivered us a peacock in all its finery. I turned the beauty and the exquisiteness of it over in my mind as though it would never tarnish.