Not up to speed...

After some four years spent waist-deep in it, I can't say that I had any epiphanies about Japanese culture. It's not possible, in my opinion, to be able to claim any deep understanding of a nation without some greater depth of integration. And most people simply cannot get "inside" in such a short period of time.

Like that crap that John Howard's trying to pull in the Northern Territories with Mal Brough as his mouthpiece is exactly the kind of short-sighted, package-tourism "I understand these people" bullshit I mean. But I didn't set out here to get all pissed off about that. The point is that you can't just drop in somewhere, take a few holiday pics, and think that pronouncing "paella" with a Spanish accent is enough.

Personally, I was disabused of some notions, and ran head-long into a whole bunch of others. In total, though, I can honestly say that I did learn a few things about how (some) people live and think and react to events there.

But I was mistaken in thinking the learning curve would be any less steep for this part of England, commonalities of language be damned. Maybe my biggest obstacle in getting things straight here is my limited contact with the natives. At least when I was working in Japan I was forced to interact with the locals for the majority of each day. You have to make conversation with people for eight (or ten or twelve) hours a day for a couple of months straight, you're bound to pick up something. Besides, y'know, somebody's phone number or the flu or something. But here I just don't have that excuse. And it probably wouldn't work anyway.

"Pardon me, uh, guv-nor, but I was wondering if I could talk to you for, oh, thirty minutes or so about topics generally found of interest to a, uh, toff like yourself."
"[Heavily accented expletive deleted] off, wanker."

Anyway, this discovery is mildly frustrating. At this rate I may never get to understand the esoteric secrets of the "cuppa", much less the mindset of a country that would send colonies and armies halfway around the planet for the stuff before claiming it's "the national drink."