Be forewarned: There may be four twenty-something tourists from San Francisco talking at volume about the most inane of inanities, screaming their banalities about crypto and life optimization to the entire restaurant, wholly without self-awareness or self-consciousness, bleating in the way only young, over-salaried, men and women making more than the GDP of a small country can bleat, filled with the confidence that they have “won” the game, mastered the universe, disease free forever, cycling their plasma, collecting Michelin-stared culinary experiences like Mother Theresa saved children, forcing the dejected (and soft-spoken, might I add) German couple next to us to roll their eyes so far back into their heads it looked like they had become zombified by chatter, as if every positive decision in their otherwise cruel lives had been nullified by this seating arrangement.

— Craig Mod, Driving the Tōkaidō, Ridgeline, 2025