[samurai007]

Thanks GTJ.

About the countryside vs city, seeing the scenery is only 1 part of it. Having lived in both big city and rural America, and rural Japan (and visited nearby Osaka frequently even though I didn't live there, as well as visiting Tokyo, etc), IMO there's a difference between urban people and rural people, in both countries (and probably most or all countries). Urban people tend to be more wary of strangers and busy with their own things. I don't mean to insult city folk, but I just find country folk to be more welcoming, open, and friendly on average, while urbanites tend to be more guarded and keep to their own business and prefer if you do the same. Of course there are exceptions, but in my experience, this tends to be the case in both the US and Japan (probably more in the US, because of the added element of fear of crime in the bigger cities). Total strangers, in my experience, are more likely to say hi and strike up a conversation in the rural areas of both countries.

So it's not just scenery, it's meeting and talking to the rural folks, seeing what their life is like, experiencing their hospitality rather than the more guarded urban atmosphere that tends to happen in big cities everywhere, that helps you see the "real Japan". If they just wandered around Akihabara in an anime daze without talking to people and getting to know them a bit, I would say they didn't really experience much of the real Japan...