It’s funny how east mirrors west. Many people from Europe and the U.S. are quite taken with Japan, and would love nothing more than to spend a week exploring every temple, shrine and back alley in Kyoto. In a similar fashion, the Japanese have had a fascination with the West ever since Commodore Perry sailed his black ships into Yokohama Bay in 1853. You can see Japan’s tendency to look culturally to the West when you look at such iconic sights as Tokyo Tower (a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower), the “Spanish Slope” in Shibuya (named after the Spanish Steps in Rome), a mountain range called the Japan Alps, and the replica of the Statue of Liberty in Odaiba. There’s another good example of Japan’s love of the West right in my home prefecture of Gunma: a theme park called Kronenberg, a replica of a German village at the top of Mt. Akagi complete with beer, sausages and embarrassed-looking Germans standing around. Japan isn’t alone in its love of the West: China liked the pleasant Austrian town of Hallstatt so much they cloned the UNESCO world heritage site, creating a perfect copy of the town for Chinese tourists to visit.
