Some thoughts

Hmm, just watched a program on discovery channel about a chef from New York and his adventures in Japan.

It occurred to me while I was watching this that the oddities they were using to highlight Japan as an exotic and interesting place to those westerners watching back home didn't seem so exotic to me....They're familiar.

How strange. I remember watching programmes like this back home and being filled with intense interest and a lust to travel and explore such places.

And certainly Japan was very ALIEN like when I arrived, but it occurred to me today, watching this programme. That Japan is home now.

At least Tokyo is anyway :)

The vending machines, the strange food, the frustratingly formal customs, the weird and wonderful technology, it's all just familiar.

Amazing isn't it, the human capability to ADJUST.

I am so glad I came to Japan now and am looking forward to discovering other places in the world, though I really think you gain so much better understanding if you actually LIVE somewhere else rather than just visit.

For example, I was on the running machine at the gym the other day, the only gaijin in a line of asians, and a news programme came on documenting the atomic bomb which hit Hiroshima during World War II.

I watched this programme and wondered if wars like this would still be possible if more people travelled. Ironically the song playing on my IPOD was Bruce Springsten's "Born in the USA", which has a line 'sent me off to a foreign land, said go and kill the yellow man'...

Of course he was talking about Vietnam, but the effect was still just as chilling.

And as I looked around me I thought even if there was a war between New Zealand and Japan in 20 years I could never comprehend killing 'the yellow man', ...because I've lived here.

These people go to the same gym, the same supermarkets, the same post office as me. We may come from a different culutral background, but essentially we are still people.

We are still human, still the same. One world.