My trip to Japan: a study in human complexity
This Spring, I went, for the first time to the enchanting land of cherry blossoms, Japan.
We all have stories and bits and bobs of knowledge about the land of the rising sun. It was at one time, the second most powerful economy in the world. Most of us Gen Xers grew up with their many technological wonders: the Sony Walkman, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox. When I first knew anything about cars, I noticed they were named Suzuki and Daihatsu. Yamaha was the most popular music school that families could afford lessons, and send their kids to.
In my world, the cultural goods the Japanese sent forth were only rivaled by Sesame Street and Hollywood.
My knowledge of the Japanese continued to collect like bits of flotsam, beyond the mega-devastating narrative of the world. There was the mysterious allure of the geisha and the luxuriating beauty of the kimono.
My older sister even tried to learn the Japanese language at one time, which yielded plenty of hearty laughter from our jue de mots as we younger ones guffawed at what sounded like crude words in our Chinese dialect. It must have worked as a sort of mnemonic though because she recently showed she could recall some of what she had learnt!
I learned how resistant they are to Christianity, which struck me at a most visceral…