2015年03月31日
A Trip Through The Country
Hello!
Today I want to talk about I walk I took the other week down highway 6 to Mitoyo. I started in the early afternoon, to give myself lots of sunlight in case I got lost and had to find my way back to familiar territory. I also knew, in the worst case scenario, that if I could find the Mitoyo You Me Town, then I would be able to find the train station to come back to Kanonji. I needn't have worried, though, as the countryside from Kanonji to Mitoyo is so open and spacious, that I had no trouble keeping myself oriented, and I was able to have a really amazing look at the Japanese countryside. In Canada, you sometimes get a very skewed idea of what Japan is like. You see images of either places like Tokyo, where there are mile-high buildings and millions of people out and about at all times, or places so far out in the country, it seems like no one lives there at all. My walk was much closer to the second image of Japan, as there were many fields and farms along the road to look at, and the backdrop of the mountains against the sky is still something that amazes me. I was describing the mountains to another teacher recently, and how they continued to impress me, and he was more interested in hearing about the prairies and flatlands that exist where I come from!
There is a saying in English that the grass is always greener on the other side, which means that we always think that what we know or have is less interesting than what we don't know or have. I come from a place where there are no mountains, or even large hills at all, but huge expanses of farmlands and fields, so seeing them in Japan is beautiful, but not impressive. My co-worker, by comparison, comes from a place that is very rocky and mountainous, so imaging nothing but flat land was something very novel and interesting.
Seeing this difference in perspective allowed me to (I hope) have a better understanding not only of other people's perspectives, but also let me know that my own views and opinions on things are not always the correct ones, but might seem that way because they are ones that I have come to. With more experience and knowledge, even the fields of Japan can be as new and exciting as the mountains.
Today I want to talk about I walk I took the other week down highway 6 to Mitoyo. I started in the early afternoon, to give myself lots of sunlight in case I got lost and had to find my way back to familiar territory. I also knew, in the worst case scenario, that if I could find the Mitoyo You Me Town, then I would be able to find the train station to come back to Kanonji. I needn't have worried, though, as the countryside from Kanonji to Mitoyo is so open and spacious, that I had no trouble keeping myself oriented, and I was able to have a really amazing look at the Japanese countryside. In Canada, you sometimes get a very skewed idea of what Japan is like. You see images of either places like Tokyo, where there are mile-high buildings and millions of people out and about at all times, or places so far out in the country, it seems like no one lives there at all. My walk was much closer to the second image of Japan, as there were many fields and farms along the road to look at, and the backdrop of the mountains against the sky is still something that amazes me. I was describing the mountains to another teacher recently, and how they continued to impress me, and he was more interested in hearing about the prairies and flatlands that exist where I come from!
There is a saying in English that the grass is always greener on the other side, which means that we always think that what we know or have is less interesting than what we don't know or have. I come from a place where there are no mountains, or even large hills at all, but huge expanses of farmlands and fields, so seeing them in Japan is beautiful, but not impressive. My co-worker, by comparison, comes from a place that is very rocky and mountainous, so imaging nothing but flat land was something very novel and interesting.
Seeing this difference in perspective allowed me to (I hope) have a better understanding not only of other people's perspectives, but also let me know that my own views and opinions on things are not always the correct ones, but might seem that way because they are ones that I have come to. With more experience and knowledge, even the fields of Japan can be as new and exciting as the mountains.
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