Do you copy?

摘要

Sometimes in Japan I look around me and all I see are versions of the world I've tried to leave behind. The area in which I live, doing its best to look like Sunnyvale, California, has no temples or shrines or narrow, winding streets of the kind we associate with "the real Japan." The girls walking down to the 7-Eleven are generally yellow-haired, with cowboy hats perched precariously on their heads and tans not ideally suited to a Japanese complexion. When I take the train to the ancient capital of Kyoto, I pass a long line of billboard ads for artificial worlds: the "Santa Maria" ship docked in Osaka, a "Britannia Village" English-language school, nearby theme parks replicating Spain and France and everywhere but here.