People in Japan are smaller than us on average, and things in Japan are smaller than wefre used to (except when they’re enormous). It’s a small country. Stabucks, for instance, actually offers a “short” size below their “tall” size, and “venti” is strictly out of the question. At Chris’s school, we played mini-volleyball. I bumped my head regularly in his apartment. Cars are often tiny. The one bus I rode was more cramped than any bus I’ve experienced since grade school. Even on the JR, so accomodating to foreigners, my head occasionally brushed low-hanging advertisements; when there were no ads in the way, I could see Ryan from the other end of the train, looming above the crowd.