Jun 21, 2023
In the interest of cutting material, I would say the first paragraph's "with that now in hand. . ." can be removed entirely and replaced with a tad quicker transition. Unless specified otherwise, we as readers know the team is going to leave after eating.
'Very' is an unnecessary word in prose, since there almost always exists a strong word to already make something 'very'. The atmosphere is already 'comforting'! However, I feel the sentence is in the wrong place, because it's accompanied by "the streets were filled with people. . ." which doesn't sound comforting and rather chaotic. So at the end here I might suggest putting "comforting atmosphere" at the end. So maybe transition with "despite how we were packed like sardines [or something], a comforting atmosphere filled the air".
Third paragraph, I don't really feel anything different has changed in dynamics except for the first sentence with "Chiyo hung onto my shirt". I feel nothing changed in the scene. But we need to know that the team made it to the coffee house, so perhaps after keeping the sentence with "Chiyo hung onto my shirt", we transition to "The coffee house was a large establishment. . ."
Chiyo running after the kitty is adorable and it should be met with the team reacting to her. Instead of telling us Chiyo is embarrassing the team, MC or passersby should show the embarrassment by reacting or speaking up about the troublemaker, adding that extra bit of personality to the scene.
Adding to that, we know that Chiyo is still chasing that cat so we don't need to be told that she still is, but the action can still be kept by having something different happen. Chiyo is causing mischief. Maybe in the act of chasing after the cat, she's knocking things over and making the owner pop a vein in his forehead.
So the assessment is: the building up around the places they are exploring is good, you have the sensory prowess readers expect when introduced to new areas, it just needs more care in how it's presented. Go over the scenes and imagine how it plays out in your head. If nothing new happens or it's more of the same, see if there's relief when cutting it.
