But even so, every day was just packed. "Lee recalls eating with Japanese office workers at the cheap curry joints by the train stations, listening to people walking by sprinkling their conversations with liberal measures of words borrowed from European languages, and seeing traditional Japanese homes intermingled with modern high rises. He found everything about Japan both strangely confusing and oddly familiar to him.
李明璁回憶，當時他跟著日本上班族一起去吃車站前最便宜的速食日式咖哩，聽著街上人們對談時，大量使用從歐美語文轉換而來的「外來語」；看著傳統的和風房舍與現代化高樓以獨特的秩序交錯融合，這一切的一切，令來自台灣的他感到既困惑又熟悉。