Subtly Alien
So, Gentle Reader, I find myself in Japan once again. As usual, I am struck by how amazingly homelike and yet essentially alien this country is. One never quite gets used to it.
I can't really even describe the feeling properly. It's like spending all day driving your car, and at some point realizing that even though it got you all over town, and it had all the usual controls and parts like wheels and engine and such, and then suddenly realizing that whatever this thing is, it is not a car. And yet you cannot say why not.
Okay, here's the example for the day. I was out doing a bit of out-of-country geocaching. Found the cache, no problem. Oh, there were the usual bits of waiting for Muggles, and wandering about muttering looking at a GPS, no doubt seeming vaguely schizophrenic to nearby folks. All par for the course. Even the giant sowbugs weren't all that weird.
But on the way to the cache, in the park, there was a sculpture. It was a sort of a tree sculpture, hidden in the middle of a grove of real trees. A tree sculpture made in the shape of a tree composed of giant fruits and vegetables. And I realized that no one was ever likely to do this in the U.S. Never in a million years. It was totally jarring to me, as I had imagined that I was in a park celebrating the beauty of nature along Yokohama bay, and suddenly the entire park is about something else altogether. Obviously, it's totally unnatural to have a giant tree-like agglomeration of enormous fruits and vegetables. And it's in a sort of shrine. Take a look over here and you can see this for yourself.
The other alien thing is the interesting sensation of being the racial outsider here. I am sure my various friends of obviously non-caucasian extraction are all too familiar with this feeling, but of course I need to come here to feel it. No one here would ever be so rude as to say some thing to me about being different. They simply choose their subway seats a few spaces further away, or avoid getting too close on a dark street by crossing a bit early. Nothing personal, nothing malicious. But you feel it every moment. We all ought to experience it, really. Just to make sure everyone knows what is being talked about, when people say racism is alive and well in our own country. No laws can fix it, no political correctness rules can remedy it. You just have to feel it yourself to understand. Nobody means any harm by it. But it's there and it'll hurt you if you let it.
I can't really even describe the feeling properly. It's like spending all day driving your car, and at some point realizing that even though it got you all over town, and it had all the usual controls and parts like wheels and engine and such, and then suddenly realizing that whatever this thing is, it is not a car. And yet you cannot say why not.
Okay, here's the example for the day. I was out doing a bit of out-of-country geocaching. Found the cache, no problem. Oh, there were the usual bits of waiting for Muggles, and wandering about muttering looking at a GPS, no doubt seeming vaguely schizophrenic to nearby folks. All par for the course. Even the giant sowbugs weren't all that weird.
But on the way to the cache, in the park, there was a sculpture. It was a sort of a tree sculpture, hidden in the middle of a grove of real trees. A tree sculpture made in the shape of a tree composed of giant fruits and vegetables. And I realized that no one was ever likely to do this in the U.S. Never in a million years. It was totally jarring to me, as I had imagined that I was in a park celebrating the beauty of nature along Yokohama bay, and suddenly the entire park is about something else altogether. Obviously, it's totally unnatural to have a giant tree-like agglomeration of enormous fruits and vegetables. And it's in a sort of shrine. Take a look over here and you can see this for yourself.
The other alien thing is the interesting sensation of being the racial outsider here. I am sure my various friends of obviously non-caucasian extraction are all too familiar with this feeling, but of course I need to come here to feel it. No one here would ever be so rude as to say some thing to me about being different. They simply choose their subway seats a few spaces further away, or avoid getting too close on a dark street by crossing a bit early. Nothing personal, nothing malicious. But you feel it every moment. We all ought to experience it, really. Just to make sure everyone knows what is being talked about, when people say racism is alive and well in our own country. No laws can fix it, no political correctness rules can remedy it. You just have to feel it yourself to understand. Nobody means any harm by it. But it's there and it'll hurt you if you let it.