Somtimes your favorite movie/book was only good in retrospect

[GeorgeParker]

That does sound like a wonderful trip to make when you are full of energy and time to enjoy it. The flight to Japan and return is exhausting itself.

Given the time and cost required to get there and back, I would want to spend at least a month there, preferably 3-6 months so I would have time to enjoy seeing various parts of the country. And I would start learning basic Japanese at least a year ahead of time. There are a lot of English speakers in Japanese cities, but not as many in the countryside, and you can't ask a street sign to please speak English.

BTW: My favorite Japanese word is どういたしまして (Dōitashimashite) which means "It was nothing" in the sense of de nada or you're welcome. And arigatō means thank you, often with various modifiers like arigatōgozaimas (which is more polite) or domoarigatō (which is thank you very much).

[ApatheticNoMore]

I think for me and Catcher in the Rye, it was at least partly a stage of life thing. Adolescent angst was a lot more relevant to me when I first read the book.

They told us we would relate to it as teenagers and I read it then for school. I found it utterly unrelatable, uninspiring and whatever, what was the point of that book? But then I have heard some people say you relate to it more if you have some life experience (maybe it's supposed to be a book for late 20 somethings or something). It was just nothing to me as a teenager though.

[GeorgeParker]

They told us we would relate to it as teenagers...

In my mid-teens I related to the hotrod and racing books written by William Campbell Gault. Quoting from http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/gault.html

"I'm proud of what I can do in my field. And I'm proud of the field. I don't need any false additions to that. If I could write like John Cheever, I'd write like Cheever. Unfortunately I can't, so I write as well as I can and as fast as I can. And some of it is good." -- William Campbell Gault

And some of it, my friends, was very very good. Even as a kid, long before I knew -- or cared -- that William Campbell Gault wrote detective stories, my early-teen car-loving self had fallen under the spell of his hot rod books for young adults: The Checkered Flag, Dirt Track Summer, Speedway Challenge, Thunder Road and all the rest were just what I was looking for. Foot to the floor action, narrow escapes and the roar of thunder were what I craved, and Gault delivered. But, even better, I never got the feeling he was talking down to his audience. The crazy, mixed-up kids in his book were recognizable; varations on me and my friends, our hopes, our fears. He got us.

Yep. I'll second that emotion.