Hi Katastrofa,
After replying to your other post on Wagtails on the ID forum, I looked in at the Japan subsection and found your report. Unfortunately (in my opinion) BF has too many sub-fora which are only visited occasionally - which is self-re-inforcing as the less they are visited, the less reason there is to visit.
I wish BF would rationalise their sub-fora to make them busier (e.g. East Asia, or even Asia, not just Japan).
I'm sorry that I didn't see your original post, otherwise I would have invited you to our area in the heart of Japan - Nara, Kyoto, Osaka (as opposed to the wallet of Japan in Tokyo).
Anyway, I'm glad you had a good time in Japan, where I have spent most of my life, and a happy one, though I'm not Japanese.
You said you saw, but didn't get a photo of the Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, so I offer you the photo attached below taken a few days ago. As long as you don't try to copyright it or sell it, you can post it as yours on any forum or facebook page you like, in your album of the trip, and claim it as your own. There are zillions of these around where I live and I have loads of spare photos.
Surely, on your list of birds seen, things you must have seen include Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Japanese White-eye, Japanese Tit and Long-tailed Tit (ssp magnus), and a few others? Carrion Crow? Large-billed Crow? Were there no Great Cormorants at the ponds where you saw the ducks?