JAPAN, PERFUME

One response to “JAPAN, PERFUME”

1. rosestrang

   May 26, 2014 at 8:41 pm

   Excellent procrastination before work – I really enjoyed this!
   I have a Japanese friend, a contemporary musician, who says he’d not be able to live in Japan again as he finds the culture so difficult for all the reasons you mention (I’d have been enraged too in the Hermes dept – I live in Edinburgh and even the scrubbed clean poker-faced politeness of middle class Edinburgh drives me mad!). Yet Japanese culture is clearly a positive influence on my friend’s work approach in terms of structure – which is highly precise

   On my way to a party at his house a few weeks ago, I picked a sprig of apple blossom, completely forgetting it was such a tradition in Japan. I offered it to him and he laughed and said that spring blossoms were often offered to business men, so I replied with fake anxiety ‘Oh no, did I get it wrong?!’ (what could be more insulting than treating an unconventional musician like a business man. It made him laugh, and we discussed the ability to laugh about such rituals and ‘getting it wrong’.

   I’d find it difficult to remain so terribly serious about behaviours. Yet, like Lilybelle (in comments above) I’ve always appreciated many aspects of Japanese culture – food, art, calligraphy and of course the absolute grace that accompanies these

   I’d like to read your article when its published

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