It seems at times as if, by common consent for the other's altering tastes, that East and West are exchanging positions. The West's love of the subtle side and back lighting, in the spirit of Junichiro Tanizaki's lovely extended essay "In Praise of Shadows," and Japan's preference for the glare of the fluorescent strip is one example.
Others are the modern Occident's taste for minimalism in interiors vs. Japan's cluttered rooms; Britain's growing vegetarian population, Japan's carnivores; the West's interest in Japanese gardens, the English garden boom here. There are more Zen practitioners now in California than in Japan, and the last hope for the sake industry we are told, is the foreign market.
Ironically, it is the patronage of foreign visitors that is also helping to preserve older style inns, those long forsaken by a Japanese clientele favoring the modern facilities of the business hotel. This reverse shift in accommodation is commented upon in Isao Sawa's "Welcome to Sawanoya, Welcome to Japan," the story of a budget inn located in a downtown district of Tokyo, one that exemplifies the old school of service: attentive without being intrusive.