Japan: Assorted Musings

Can you guess where I'm traveling from the flower above?

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Yep, it's Japan! Can we just take a moment to appreciate how elegantly this flower captures the nation? It looks like the Japanese flag, while the central red spot also resembles a sakura petal, another national symbol. The flower above was in the "Sky Garden" at Kyoto train station. The station has terminals for the famed "bullet trains", as well as normal train, subway, and bus lines. Japanese public transit is truly a marvel. Here are some other assorted musings about my time in Japan.

-The dichotomy between traditional and modern Japanese culture is very pronounced. Though I've read they can be at odds with each other, at least at a surface level, the interaction is subtle and truly fascinating.

-Strict manners and other social behaviors (such as bowing) are very alive in Japan. Foreigners stand out pretty quickly.

-For other prospective travelers, most Japanese people (outside of hotels and huge tourist attractions) don't speak english. However, key vocabulary words are not out of the question. Some pointing, gesturing, and elementary japanese can usually get the job done (if not somewhat sheepishly.)

-Fast Food restaurants are replaced by convenience stores such as 7-11, Family Mart, and Lawson. You can buy boxed meals from the freezer (which they microwave at the register). The food is cheap, but still delicious, and lots of people come in during mealtime rush.

-Traveling to Japan opens one's eyes to many different facets of beauty. There's plenty of natural sightseeing as well as amazing industrial complexes. There's functional beauty in the way certain systems are run, and especially in traditional Japanese architecture and interior. Of course, if one has the opportunity to see them worn, yukata and kimono offer a unique beauty that can't be seen anywhere else.

-The amount of cute things (relative to an American of course) is pretty hard to describe. The advertising, the mascots, the music that plays in stores, the restaurant menus, certain behaviors of very people themselves...

Well, that's all I can come up with at the moment. I hope you've learned something about Japan from this unorganized little post.

Update: Vacation and Discussion on Entertainment

Traveling tends to produce lots of ideas, but it doesn't necessarily offer much time to write about them. I'll be out until August 17th, but I'll still try to write posts (though they may be shorter than usual.)

In lew of a formal post, here's an adaptation of a reply in an email conversation I was having with one of my friends. We were discussing the merits of entertainment mediums (particularly movies and videogames.) I edited the email to make it more cohesive and smooth out grammar issues, but it's otherwise preserved in all its spontaneity. Although this is informal, I hope it is still thought provoking!

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I do feel like movies, games, and entertainment in general these days are getting very realistic. They have more power to affect our lives than ever before. That power can be used for great things, like lifting people's moods reliably, or bringing people together to share fond experiences. But it can also cause harm if one wants to... say, escape the real world and its problems. It's a tricky topic.

I always lose energy after watching movies. It doesn't matter how much I enjoy it or what kind of movie it is. I always don't feel like doing anything afterwards. If you ask my family, you'll find out I pretty much refuse to watch movies any time except for right before bed for this reason. I wouldn't call it depression, but I think I have an idea of what you mean.

I would say I've felt this way for videogames quite a lot actually. I try to reason myself out of it with something like this:

Games (and movies) are made by other humans to satisfy a need or craving in human minds. There's a lot of possible needs, but some include social connectivity, a feeling of achievement, an outlet for mental passion, and many more that I can't think about. If a game succeeds in engaging its user on that level, then it "sucks us into its world." Leaving that world can make reality seem like a lower, boring, less productive form of existence.

I think this is what causes the feeling you're describing. It's not necessarily that the game or movie world is so much more interesting than yours (although that is often the case.) It's that these entertainment mediums provide total engagement. Your mind experiences full activation and utilization, and I think this is what we humans love the most: working hard to the best of our potential. It's hard to find this in life, but I'm sure you've felt this when practicing piano/organ or doing other things. When work becomes a melody and not a chore, all of our positive emotions come out.

Videogames and movies are especially effective in immediately activating this feeling, leaving them can cause feelings like this. But we should remember that although that fictional world isn't real, the emotions it made us feel were real, and those emotions are what makes entertainment valuable.

Ultimately, it's a tricky subject to write something cohesive about. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should take those emotions from entertainment and use them to seek out their counterparts in real life. That doesn't mean that games and movies are useless. They help us recognize these feelings, and know how to find them, both for ourselves and others. For that there is nothing to be depressed about. Of course, anything in excess can be harmful, and entertainment is particularly vulnerable to this. It's a fine line to walk...

Memory

As I sorted through some old pictures from my phone I was struck by how many events I had forgotten. With how fast the world moves today, it's pretty easy to forget the past isn't it?

I proposed an exercise to myself, and if you're interested, you can try this too. Think of a set time period in the past (could be a week ago, or even a year). What events can you recall? What days were the most memorable? What have you been doing?

Then take a look at your phone gallery, facebook wall, or any other source of your past. Which things did you forget about? What about the things that stuck out? Why were they important to you?

Yes, it is entirely possible that one simply forgets things because... well we're forgetful. But I feel that the events we recall the most clearly are especially revealing about our priorities and interests in life. I don't mean to say this lightly. Decoding our memories is never an easy task, and there are times when it is even potentially harmful. Yet the past contains the building blocks of who we are today, and shapes what we will use to build ourselves tomorrow. Framing one's life in this larger sense helps us stay on track towards our goals.

But more importantly, it may reveal the end of one road, and safely guide us towards another.