Finally read this. It was fairly long, doncha know.
About the tourist bubble, part of the reason that we vacation is so that we can live in that bubble a while. New experiences around every corner, and not having to worry about the work and day-to-day living. I mean, I think about the area around my home town, and how little I've ever bothered to explore. My first time on the Santa Barbara pier was a year ago, as was my first visit to the Magic Castle. I mean, hell, I've never been to Pink's Hot Dogs or Randy's Donuts or the Pantry Café either, all classic L.A. Maybe we travel to have an excuse to escape our ordinary life.
Or a little thing in Aria, where Akari concludes that that her imitation Neo Venezia is just as good as old Venice would have been, because it's about the feeling she gets from her own experiences. Our whole lives are a bubble in one way or another.
My own experiences in Japan were not quite tourist, not quite authentic life, as I spent a hectic five days with other graduate students being shuttled around between various academic and tourist sites. Going to the head JMA office in Tokyo where they predict hurricanes and the sakura front. And another day to a little JAXA radio telescope facility out in the countryside -- the village thing seemed to be tanuki statues. It was a lot of extremes -- lunch in a simple research facility cafeteria, then dinner on the 40th floor above Tokyo in a high-class Chinese restaurant with university deans trying to impress the Americans from the National Science Foundation. And just simple moments like hauling my suitcase from a Kyoto ryokan into a neighborhood laundromat in the early morning hours, passing a few schoolgirls on their way to school. Assembling the group is easy when all twelve of you are over 180cm/5'11" -- even the women -- in a country where the average height of men is 10cm shorter.
I had the same feeling -- a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live in Japan. The culture feels so restrictive in some ways that would bother be particularly. I feel like I would have become a NEET if I was born there. But as I learn more, I wonder if it's just my perpective and there are different kinds of freedoms there I couldn't easily see? Ah well, it was fun. Glad you had a good trip.
About the tourist bubble, part of the reason that we vacation is so that we can live in that bubble a while. New experiences around every corner, and not having to worry about the work and day-to-day living. I mean, I think about the area around my home town, and how little I've ever bothered to explore. My first time on the Santa Barbara pier was a year ago, as was my first visit to the Magic Castle. I mean, hell, I've never been to Pink's Hot Dogs or Randy's Donuts or the Pantry Café either, all classic L.A. Maybe we travel to have an excuse to escape our ordinary life.
Or a little thing in Aria, where Akari concludes that that her imitation Neo Venezia is just as good as old Venice would have been, because it's about the feeling she gets from her own experiences. Our whole lives are a bubble in one way or another.
My own experiences in Japan were not quite tourist, not quite authentic life, as I spent a hectic five days with other graduate students being shuttled around between various academic and tourist sites. Going to the head JMA office in Tokyo where they predict hurricanes and the sakura front. And another day to a little JAXA radio telescope facility out in the countryside -- the village thing seemed to be tanuki statues. It was a lot of extremes -- lunch in a simple research facility cafeteria, then dinner on the 40th floor above Tokyo in a high-class Chinese restaurant with university deans trying to impress the Americans from the National Science Foundation. And just simple moments like hauling my suitcase from a Kyoto ryokan into a neighborhood laundromat in the early morning hours, passing a few schoolgirls on their way to school. Assembling the group is easy when all twelve of you are over 180cm/5'11" -- even the women -- in a country where the average height of men is 10cm shorter.
I had the same feeling -- a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live in Japan. The culture feels so restrictive in some ways that would bother be particularly. I feel like I would have become a NEET if I was born there. But as I learn more, I wonder if it's just my perpective and there are different kinds of freedoms there I couldn't easily see? Ah well, it was fun. Glad you had a good trip.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto