QotD: A Long, Long Way From Home

nobody@vox.com(annaliisa) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:40:41 -0500

Where is the farthest you have ever been away from home? Did you get homesick?
Submitted by Melissa.

1. Tokyo.

2. No.

I rarely get homesick when I am traveling. The feeling of being in Tokyo was strange, but a good strange. I was deposited there because of my job, with very little prior preparation or knowledge about Japan, the Japanese language, or the frightening monster size of Tokyo. I also had no idea how arduous a 14 hour flight from New Jersey to Tokyo would be. At the 36-consecutive-hours-awake mark, my body broke down entirely, and it made things extra surreal and dreamlike. What I remember of Tokyo:

A. The Japanese people work very hard, and for many long, painful hours every day.

B. The Japanese know their snacks--good stuff. I came home with a suitcase full of candy and dried fish and even fake little cakes made out of plastic that I don't need but had to own anyway.

C. If you go up to the top of the Tokyo Tower, all you see is skyscrapers stretching to the ends of the earth in every direction, plus a little gray smudge in the distance that people claim is Mount Fuji.

D. Don't get in the way of all those serious-faced commuters all dressed in black wool overcoats all walking in the same direction at the same pace at the same time--you'll be a flattened bystander pancake in no time!

E. The lights of Akihabara are blinding and just as beautiful as what you see on television.

F. I want one of their mint green retro mini fridges. Why can't we have those here?

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Anna Liisa Land

QotD: A Long, Long Way From Home