After arriving back in Tokyo from a weekend in Nagano Prefecture's mountainous Minami Shinshu region last month, I was greeted by a series of news stories about a ruckus outside a convenience store in Shizuoka Prefecture.
Japan had just achieved an unexpected win against Ireland in the Rugby World Cup and some Irish fans had started acting up. Video footage of the inside the store lingered on the "horrific" aftermath of their antics; corn dogs had been eaten but condiment packs and skewers had not been put in the trash. The collision of different standards of behavior was striking.
My weekend in the mountains had been spent biking and hiking on a two-day tour organized by American Lucas Badtke-Berkow's magazine Papersky. The trip had been full of geniality and wholesomeness, two things that usually make me very uncomfortable. The Marie Kondo-like finger-wagging of the TV news pulled me right back into my normality after having been temporarily entranced with the idea that yes, dammit, I could also be healthy and good-natured, and not just a fat, bolshy complainer.
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