Friday, June 16, 2017

Letter to Japan

Dear Japan,

I know that you may be unaware that I visited you recently, but I have. Just to be clear, I don't hate you, but I have a long list of problems with you.
First of all, why in God's name are samurai depicted as being so large. In every movie and TV show I've ever seen, they are these hulking man's of myth. Let me tell you something, everyone in Japan is 5’6, I swear. None of them are hulking monsters.
If they wanted to create a giant samurai, they would have to link arms and do it in the style of Voltron. If anyone felt like a samurai, it was me. Everywhere I went things were narrow. The aisles in a grocery store? Narrow. The sidewalks? Narrow. The hallways to my hotel room? Surprisingly large actually.
The point is, can the ceilings be higher? Everything is built like a shoebox. I felt claustrophobic the entire time I was in your space.
There was a specific time inside of a woodcarvers shop, where I had to bow, just to get under the doorway. Then once inside, I had to calculate my every movement, because I felt like a bowl in a china closet. And I was afraid that if I broke anything in the shop, it would turn out that the woodcarver was secretly the emperor of Japan.
What I mean by that is that everyone was so polite. I never felt unwelcome, but if someone came into my store, and they were a giant, and they started knocking everything over I wouldn't be very happy. As an American, I'm never 100% nice to strangers anyway. So I'd end up asking the gentleman to be careful or I would roll my eyes and say something to the effect of, “Just another day at the grindstone.”
But this woodcarver, he was regal and well dressed and nicer than most Americans would treat me in a similar situation. Everyone held themselves with such pride that any of them could have been royalty.
Anyone who didn't seem like royalty had hair like an anime super villain, and I don't want to mess with that either. And if someone was neither of those things they were a child or a tourist.
There was a point while I was there on the train and I realized that out of fifty people I could see, I was the only one wearing a t-shirt. A Captain America t-shirt. Everyone else was wearing a suit, a skirt, or a blouse. They were all impeccably dressed. But even though I was so out of place like an oversized middle finger on an otherwise small hand, no one treated me that way. My wife seems to think that people thought I was cute. Good job Japan. You keep a high standard, and I can respect that

-AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Poetic Movie Review of The Proposal

 There are three types of RomComs There's the ones that are corny The kind that are raunch and porn-y Then there's ones filled with ...