Around the world
I think every place is basically the same as every other place. I mean, so long as you have gravity and air that is 99% of the comparison right there. Race, religion, language, culture, customs, cuisine, fashion, economics, geography, ecology, wildlife, etc. - I think of these as mostly cosmetic and therefore of only passing importance. Naturally, no one agrees with me or even concedes that I might have a point. Taking gravity and air for granted, people under-estimate their complexity and sophistication and then in turn over-estimate the importance of cosmetic appearances. So I say to people in my hometown, Guelph, or other people in Ontario Province, or Canada in general that Tokyo is just like Guelph, only more so. Of course, I am paraphrasing a joke from the movie “The Secret of My Success” (Michael J. Fox, 1987) in which Brantley Foster explains to his mother in Kansas that New York is just like Kansas (while he is being shot at in a telephone booth). No one gets my movie reference. (No one ever gets the movie references that I weed into conversation. They think I’m making comments up on my own, or just saying weird stuff out of the blue. It’s a bit of both, really. I liberally borrow and use things and then mix them with my own ideas.) I don’t need to bungee jump, or skydive, or swim with dolphins, or travel the world (although I have traveled around it, about half by train and half by plane). I guess I have a low threshold of excitement. Just being alive in Tokyo is a great adventure for me. I don’t blame people in Guelph for ceasing to care after about three years. Now when I visit they look at me as say, “Oh, you’re back,” and that’s all. I don’t blame them. I’m out of sight so I’m out of mind, which might be a good thing, after all. But returning to Tokyo is always a gas, and when I occasionally become self-reflective while moving around in it I think “This is marvelous.”