The Country or A City
07 Jul 2010 2 Comments
in English Posts, Travel
Missouri made me think. My host mother said, “If you don’t force yourself to meet people, you can live for three months without seeing a single person here.” It’s a total different way of living, from Bombay life, or even from the life in a rural area of Aichi prefecture where I am born.
I visited Missouri for my friends’ wedding party at their parent’s house. The cozy house was in a wood that you can’t tell where the end of their property is. There’s a big natural pond in that. Next door neighbor is one mile away, who has a croft of a donkey (which I never see existed, mysteriously). When you want to get a glossary, you drive the winding back road among the wide fields for fifteen minutes and get to the nearest Kmart or Wal-Mart.
Though, it’s not like an Indian village. You can get anything you need if you can drive. A mall has all the brand shops. The huge flat glossary stores have all stuffs for well-living. There’s even a Korean-Japanese supermarket. So it’s not inconvenient. It’s just isolated. Instead, you are surrounded by the beautiful nature, dogs and cats, or cows and horses. Wild birds visit your kitchen window. It’s just a matter of choice for life; people or nature, city or the country, Starbucks-at-every-corner or aromatic-coffee-made-by-a-country-mom.
I was watching fireflies around me at night at their front yard. The last time I saw natural fireflies in my yard was when I was about five. They died long time ago, but then my hometown opened a “Firefly Cave” which the nearest school kids aqua-farm fireflies and release in. I thought it was kind of sad to see firmed fireflies, and I didn’t visit the cave twice. But here I found them again. One of them rested in my palm.
Would I choose a life in woods, ever? I am not sure yet.
If there are many choices in life; I may not know what I take and what not take. So far, I just took things on the table in front of me, and there were no multiple choices. To others, I easily say “Hey, he’s not the only guy in the world, you know.” But actually he is to her. It’s like that, always. But when I see so different lives at a time, I am overpowered by the fact that I could also choose one in many possibilities.
But I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter what I choose, and I won’t care how I live in the end. Dying in a small studio apartment in Tokyo and being found after one week because of the smell, or dying in the quiet wood and being eaten by a bear; either way I would be OK. Maybe not a big deal. Wherever corner of a small town in the world or under a tree of a wood or a bush of a field. But no, a desert is not an option.
City of Liberty
06 Jul 2010 4 Comments
in English Posts, Travel
A reason that people like USA is the atmosphere and culture of freedom. Typically speaking, because it’s a country of immigrants, anyone can be free from their own background culture and behave like just as you are originally. What I got in the New York trip was a close impression as I imagined before; it’s neutral. Amazingly neutral. The city is designed for anyone’s comfort. You won’t have any trouble in reading and adjusting an unknown culture there from the first day you arrive, even if you have never been to the city before.
But it doesn’t mean that people in New York are all out of their cultural background. Hindus, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Amish, or white people and black people, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Indian, Japanese. They have their own, kind of, extreme way of living in the city, but it works anyway, and no one bothers. On the other hand, you can also be just a New Yorker. It’s your call.
I came to India because I wanted to be away, very far away. A word can have many layers of meaning. Away can mean away from my country, away from my city, family, myself, old memories, or some abstract concepts of things making myself myself. I don’t know which was the right answer or maybe all. I just wanted to be free from what I was mentally trapped in. Sometimes, running away and moving forward can be the same meaning, and I found one way of peace and liberty in Bombay City.
What worked for me is the different culture which I never totally be adjusted. Some jokes on me that I became a half Indian now, but it is not true at all. If you are not Indian, you will never be one. In Bombay, I find my nature as a reflection of the Indian culture, and yet have no obligation to follow the Japanese culture. In the contrast, it lets me learn that everything is objectively relative and subjectively absolute. Because I don’t adjust, I see things keeping a certain distance. The gap and space gives me air to breath enough.
In the sense, if I chose to live in New York instead of Bombay, the result must have been quite different. I think I chose the right city which I needed at the right time. Someday, I would live in New York, would love to. Or any other city. But for now, Bombay is my city.
Choices
24 Jun 2010 6 Comments
in English Posts, Travel
I have visited all the places you would go if you are the first-timer in New York. Central Park, Empire State Building, Broadway musicals, Times Square, Libraries, China Town, Riverside Park, Colombia University, and of course, the Statue of Liberty. I don’t know I covered them all here. But the most exciting place I’ve been was actually “Fareway” a supermarket.
The outside of the market was covered with vegetables and fruits. Inside, there are so many foods – 100 types of cheeses, meats, sausages, and 20 different brands’ smoked sarmon. They have this huge Bento corner with Asian bentos, sushi, soba, or Italian, Middle Eastern, anything. Chell fish, tuna, prowns. All types of coffees, teas. Snacks and again 100 different cone frakes. Lots of lots of choices are here. I was almost lying down in the center of the supermarket holidng my head. I felt dizzy. They have everything what I wanted to buy.
If I had come to NY from Japan, I would find this city in a different way. But I came from India without taking a break for a year. I am used to the way there so much, and I totally forgot that the world gives me this many choices if I have oppotunity and money (technically, I don’t have money, though). I couldn’t decide what to buy, and finally took a pack of Canadian roll and salad. It was a hard decision, and still I am not sure if it was the right decision.
The same thing happened when I visited a Japanese market today. Next of Bryant Park, there are some Japanese Bento places and market there. I happened to dump into the place, and stayed almost one hour to decide what to buy for lunch. They have sushi, eel, gyudon, kara-age don, or whatever you name as Japanese food. I am confused and couldn’t make my mind. So I left the shops and went to watch a movie. After three hours deep consideration, I finally decided to buy a pack of tuna donburi. It was a hard decision to deny the existance of eel donburi.
This feeling, seeing a lot of choices of Japanese foods in an usual supermarket of a foreign country, can’t be shared with anyone, but people who lives in developping-in-progress countries. If I compare, Tokyo and NY is quite similar in the sense of structuring. The difference is that NY has the huge populartion of immigrants and foreign people. If I compare Tokyo + NY and Bombay, the difference is too huge. Bombay is not acually a city of the world in the sense. A loooong way to go for India. 5 years, 10 years, or more? I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes.
New York Now
23 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in English Posts, Travel
“I am at Times Square. It’s fucking insane here. Where are you? ” A guy walking next of me was talking loud on his cellphone.
It is really crazy after 10 pm at Times Square; so many people coming out of the theaters. A topless bronde girl with micro mini skirt of American flag pattern plays guiter everynight at the center of Times Square, and she allows visitors to take photos with her (is she working for New York City?).
My hotel is in Little Brazil where is two blocks away from Times Square. It’s a Japanese hostel and I sleep with other five Japanese girls in the same room. The room is clean and confortable enough. Cheap also. I can use the kitchen and washing machine.
One girl in the same room is a dancer. She made her mind to come to study dance in New York for one month. This is her last week. We talked how she could actually live in New York to study dancing seriously. Getting a job here, or getting a student visa? I just wish she will be living here next year.
One day I was walking near Wall Street. After visiting the Stature of Liberty and moved to Ground Zero, I am lost in the downtown and needed a help. I talked to one woman who was buying a bunch of flowers with her son and she took me to Chinatown. She looked like I-was-a-hippie-before. She told me to give her a pen and paper, and explained me the structure of the New York City. ”See, always check if you are down from 32nd Street, or West or East of 5th avenue. If you are still lost, just look up to find the Empire State Building. ” After that I always see the sky to find the top of the Empire State Building. It works.
Reading a book in Bryant Park, a fat guy with backpack came to ask me if I am a Newyorker. I said I am just a visitor for a week. He said “Okay, have a nice day.” That’s one of the best part in New York; no one think that I am a foreinger. There are so many people looking like me. Chinese American or Japanese or I don’t know. Everyone looks like a foreigner or everyone looks like a Newyorker.
I buy a cup of beer in the park at 4 pm. I can show my skin as much as I want and drink beer in the public place in the afternoon of Weekdays. The bartender says “How you doing?’, pass a beer and says ”Have a nice day.” They talk in a way I am familiar, maybe from TV of movies. Nothing surprise me, but easy. Lots of lots of foods from many many countries.
It’s jsut a random writing. The New York Public Library gave me only 45 minutes so I don’t have time to brush up my writing. I am just clicking Publish.
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