Thumbing through some faded photographs of my early days in Japan, I find a mustachioed face with shoulder-length hair and water-clear eyes, eyes perhaps indicative of a vast open space behind. My face.
Thirty years later and both the mustache and hair are memories. Only the wide eyes — and perhaps that empty space — remain.
But those eyes have seen a lot in the past three decades. The Japan of now is not the Japan of then. Here are just a few of the ways it has changed.