Friday, November 17, 2006

Japan's Foliage and NYC is dirty

I remind myself thatthe perpose of this blog is to record ordinary Japanese people's perceptions about things... perceptions that will probably change over time. 50 years ago people probably had a very diferent opiion about wine for example, than they do today. Occaisionally i rant, but it's hard to explain situations without including the ocaisional "huh?" or "hmmm, doesn't that sound contradictory?"

Anyay, two things that came up on the same day... included b/c I feel they are common perceptions.

In the morning a student informed me and the rest of the room, that "only Japan has many colorful leaves in Autumn."
She understood that other places have autumn (believe me, a lot of Japanese are surprised to learn this.) but still, because Japan is of course, uniquely unique, **only japan has a variety of colors in the same place.*** She was adamant about this.

She explained that gaikoku (foreign land) has only one color, usually yellow or brown.
I said, well, there are lots of colors.

(Actually I find japanese autumn underwhelming. It's ok, but I dont know why they rave about it so much. It's like if you grew up in Niagara and went to some town with a medium sized waterfall, sure it's cool but you wouldt feel so excited about it. So yeah, autumn is ok here but it really can't compare to Vermont for example. But that's not the point...)

"no no no, foreign contries have only one color!"
"Well my hometown n New jersey has red trees, yellow trees, orange, brown..." (It's extra funny because when Japanese want to refer to autumn colorS in English they usually say "red leaves"... why? B/c Japan's autumn is 95% red maple.

"yes, but different places. Here is red, another place is yellow, another is orange. ONLY JAPAN has them together!"

I mean, where do people come up with this and more importantly, why?

"No, actually even my house as a kid had red and yellow etc together. Just in my front yard was a mix"
"No, no, no"
"Mikiko (not real name), come on, this is my house. I remember what it looked like. Lotsa trees."
Hmm, maybe she'd concede the mix thing but...
No, uh, well, ONLY JAPAN has all those colors together with green! Yeah that's right"
"No, you see these colors in the USA for example, I'm sure china or Europe is similar, occur in cooler places. Cooler places tend to have pine trees too. So If you look at a mountain, you can see red trees, yellow trees, and green pine trees..."
'No, ONLY JAPAN!"
It's like a drug -- she has to score an ONLY JAPAN fix or go nuts trying.
"Well, only Japan has red maple"
Now I think the Japanese maple is bautiful but I see them back home too. Probably imported i guess, so score one for Japan, but c'mon, most flowers n people's flower boxes here, such as pansies came from someplace else originally. Not to mention brocolli, tomatos, eggplant etc.

So in summary (all caps for people who are browsing) ONLY JAPAN HAS A MIX OF AUTUMN COLORS IN ONE PLACE

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