National appeal. Or Emma Peel. Whatever.

I know I've said it a bunch of times before, but Japan was a crazy-wack-cartoon-opera of a country. It was absurd and dignified and too often surreal to be as bad as it seemed. There were so many things about that place that were just unimaginable in an American context that it was easy to find something fascinating. Sport as art? Check. Writing as spiritual exercise? Got it. Mutant-grasshopper-cyborg as cultural hero? Of course, haven't you been paying attention?

Somehow I expected to stumble into something like that in England. Some sort of British cultural item that would be fascinating and endearing and would give me a entry point from which to start getting into life here. Maybe not anything as immediately satisfying as, say, Sapporo-style ramen, but something, right? I mean, besides cricket. Which seems to be something that England can't really claim as a specialty anymore anyway...