http://tokyo.metblogs.com/2004/09/19/new-arrivals/ Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:09:03 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://tokyo.metblogs.com/2004/09/19/new-arrivals/comment-page-1/#comment-51 Seth Delackner Tue, 21 Sep 2004 03:54:17 +0000 http://tokyo.metblogs.com/2004/09/19/new-arrivals/#comment-51 Your post resonates with my own experience. You say that you have no plan beyond just a "zen" approach to life. But realize that this in itself, aside from being true for me as well, is not very common in the US. Practically every Japanese I meet in Tokyo thinks that I don't act "american," whatever that means. I think it is mainly a product of american television being the main interaction most people have with americans. I don't know how old you are, but for me, once I got here I realized that a huge set of experiences I had as a child in the 1980s built into me a love for the really beautiful aspects of both old-Japan (Kyoto-style) and "neo-Tokyo". Only now that I'm here does the negative side become strikingly clear. *After* moving here a friend sent me the entire back-catalog of a web-comic called Megatokyo, written from a really starry-eyed perspective. I'm enjoying seeing it from "on the ground". No one ever mentions that the air in Tokyo often smells of acrid burning plastic... Your post resonates with my own experience. You say that you have no plan beyond just a “zen” approach to life. But realize that this in itself, aside from being true for me as well, is not very common in the US. Practically every Japanese I meet in Tokyo thinks that I don’t act “american,” whatever that means. I think it is mainly a product of american television being the main interaction most people have with americans. I don’t know how old you are, but for me, once I got here I realized that a huge set of experiences I had as a child in the 1980s built into me a love for the really beautiful aspects of both old-Japan (Kyoto-style) and “neo-Tokyo”. Only now that I’m here does the negative side become strikingly clear. *After* moving here a friend sent me the entire back-catalog of a web-comic called Megatokyo, written from a really starry-eyed perspective. I’m enjoying seeing it from “on the ground”. No one ever mentions that the air in Tokyo often smells of acrid burning plastic…

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