Japan - the sheer information overload (that nobody actually pays attention to).

Everything is exploding with text, sound, lights to the point where nothing goes into the brain. One supermarket aisle can be hitting you with five or more songs and shouting advertisements. The text on presentations, TV commercials, websites and often menus is unreadable. Billboards and outdoor advertising doesn’t get replaced, cleaned or updated, more just gets added around it leaving the old stuff to fade and rot. The staff in shops spend their entire day shouting the word ‘irasshaimase’ to alert you to their presence and welcome you to the store, though it’s very rare to speak to shop staff outside of small stores and necessary counter interactions.

Standing to board a train, one can hear sounds from every nearby platform - multiple jingles playing at the same time, train and station information, safety warnings in many languages for each train, an incomprehensible tannoy announcement blasting through a very old speaker, someone shouting into a megaphone and someone else stood on a box shouting with just their voice - all at the same time. All whilst passengers mostly stand in absolute silence with their earphones in.

For a country that values peace and quiet in some lovely ways, public life can be a sensory bombardment in other very unnecessary ones.