Miso seems to also be the base for a lot of things! Japanese food is really the best! I love the lunch boxes that you can buy at the train stations for your train journey! Lots of nice little goodies to choose from!

I found that many of the people could speak or at least understand English, and they were really quite helpful... also, most of the signs for public transport are also in English. I was mainly in the big cities, and so I don't know how it is in the rural or smaller areas!