My page on JAPAN

I love Japan, "malgré tout". And Tokyo is not "Japan". Tokyo is... Tokyo. Here, if you are not amongst your group, you simply don't exist. In rush hours, everybody walks strait in his direction and it seems a miracle that they collide very seldom! They are skilled "navigators". You can understand immediately if somebody is from out (japanese or "gaijin", that is foreigner) just because they give way to everybody... and they quite can't move from their place! I remember an aged couple (probably english?) smiling and giving way to the hurried people in Shinjuku station (one of the biggest and crowded in Tokyo): in the time I walked for 20 meters they couldn't move 1 meter! But they were smiling kindly...
Amongst the general indifference.
Tokyo is something like the sum of hundreds of small villages, towns, cities, some quite old, some very modern. But here and there you can also enjoy the town. Near my home there is a boulevard of cherries; in April was gorgeous: all in flower, this pale pink quite white, and under a cushion of bright yellow rape-flowers. In night time there were thousand of paper lanterns lit from tree to tree, all the boulevard long. Incredibly beautiful!
And at the beginning of this month, at 9 PM when I went out of my work place, a concert of cicadas surprised me pleasantly. There is no green (visible) near my school! And when I was walking from the station to my home, there where boys firing fire-works and crickets singing... And very little people in the streets...
I felt so good!
Tokyo is all this and a lot more. The city never sleeps! There are shops (and not just night clubs) open all the night long. You can find national restaurants of quite any nation, and now Italian restaurants are fashionables.
But I prefer to eat Japanese food: I love it!
Japanese (and also several "gaijin") think Japan is Unique and Incomprehensible... I don't agree, or better: each Nation is Unique, and in each Nation, unique is each region, and each town... as unique is each of us. About understanding, the problem is the same: It is not easy to understand a different culture if not being extremely humble and willing to learn. But it is possible. How much do you really understand Italians or Afghans or... The Uniqueness and Incomprehensibleness (does this word exist?) of Japan is a Myth!
Substained both from Japanese and not-japanese. But just a Myth!
Japan is no more Unique and Incomprehensible than ME!
Vittorio