ehy man!
I think I'll come from the same place as yours.. I just arrived here and my first impression is the same as yours. Here people don't have taste for beautiful things. There is no architecture, no house planning.. It's all build as it come and the first impression is an impression of a poor country, even if I know it's not true.
Try to build an highway into a city in Europe, how do this people has such bad ideas?! Why do they have all those electric cables? Why don't they have big alimentary stores instead of those almost useless convenience stores?
Anyway I enjoyed the movement in Namba and other places, and I hope in the future I'll have time to visit beautiful places. Still, I think in Europe we live better.
cheers