"Look kids, Big Ben, Parliment!"

I went to London last week. Because, you know, when you're not really getting paid for a month, the best thing to do is go on a vacation out of the country to a place where a flat, room-temperature beer will set you back $7.50. But it's been a hell of a lot of fun being here.

In all honesty, there's something very relaxing about being a foreigner in London as opposed to Japan. It seems unfortunate that it makes sense to me in this way, but it's got a lot to do with race. In Tokyo, the percentage of the population that is "not of Japanese ancestry1" is something like .5%, and that number is primarily made up of people from China, Korea, and other nearby Asian countries. Which means a person like me, who doesn't really have any of the outward expressions of the stereotypical Asian phenotype, tends to stand out. And be stared at. And avoided on trains with an expression of mild fear. Now, I know that's to be expected. Most folks fear what they don't understand, and you can't really understand something if you've only got a 1 in 200 chance of meeting it.

But it gets a little tiresome being something that people go out of their way not to look at, unless they think you can't see them or they're really drunk or something.

But in London there's enough brown people2 of all shades and shapes for one more not to be a novelty. Here it's possible to be foreign without being a freak. And that almost makes the cramped subways, dangerous buses, stinking sewers, bad television and warm, flat beer seem charming.

But not the mushy peas. There's only so much a reasonable man3 can overlook.

1 Which is a backwards way of saying "foreigners what wasn't born there, and who also thems that was was born there, but whose parents or granparents wasn't Japanese but were Korean or something else that ain't Japanese and therefore aren't like natives." 'Cause your family might have been in Japan since the 1800s, but if you aren't listed in a Japanese family registry as Japanese, you simply aren't counted.

2 When I say "brown people," I just mean people who have different combinations of melanin in their skins from the Caucasian standard. So it's everyone except the honkies, haystacks, Mr. Charlies, white devils, gwei-lo, haoles, pinko-greys and WASPs. Funny. Saying all that didn't make me feel any better.

3 "Reasonable" being a guy who would footnote his otherwise casual and off-the-cuff comments. Riiiiight.