Boston Globe: "First impressions of Japan — meaningful or cliché?"

Above, Matsushima Bay islets.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Boston Globe's website posted an article on travelers' first impressions of Japan, "First impressions of Japan — meaningful or cliché?"

In the article, Sebastian Smee (interesting name) writes:

Six days later, I was back home with my family in Boston, pulling perfectly wrapped presents out of my bag, blurting out descriptions of all I had seen, and holding forth on the subject of all things Japanese. I was on a high. What had happened? Something that happens, it turns out, with dismaying regularity to first-time visitors to Japan. 

They go there, however briefly, and fall heavily for it: the exquisiteness of the Japanese aesthetic, the food, the obsession with beautiful wrapping, the apparent formality (the incessant bowing and all that ceremonial swapping of business cards), the kinky fashion, everything at once familiar and rarefied, ordered, humble, in harmony, and properly scaled to human vicissitudes.

They come back, rave about it, and long for their own lives to take on some of these qualities. They buy kimonos and fans; they divide their rooms with screens; they take up bonsai-growing; they prepare sushi in their own kitchens. 

It’s all an enormous cliché. And I fell for it, or most of it. The only consoling thing? It’s happened before.

To read the full article, go here.