I heard horror stories of Japanese salarymen living in monotonous apartment blocks, returning to the wrong apartment by accident if they didn't pay attention. But American suburbs are just like that: block after block of identical houses, the same 1-n designs on the same lot plans, with the same front yards. In many neighborhoods it's even frowned upon to decorate your house so that it looks differently from the rest of the cookie-cutter houses. No shops or anything to break up the monotony, and when you do drive to the closest strip mall it's just a bunch of franchises and chain stores. No wonder we don't walk in the U.S. -- everything is too far apart, and it all looks the same anyway!

I lived in Japan in my twenties after growing up in a California suburb. I loved walking around there. In most places there simply was no grid; in places with a grid it was often broken up by geography. Many places had been inhabited continuously for hundreds of years. It's an incredibly visually rich environment.