Although the Japanese have developed quite a taste for coffee in recent years, green tea is still very popular here, and Japan is known for consuming some pretty interesting green tea products, including matcha ice cream. I had a friend in America who once asked me, “Do the Japanese have any flavors of ice cream other than green tea?” which I thought was a very telling question. Of course the answer is yes: with a few rare exceptions like a town that’s trying to declare itself the wasabi ice cream capital of the world, the ice cream eaten in Japan is exactly the same as what you’re used to, but since the image of Japanese people eating vanilla ice cream isn’t all that interesting, this information isn’t communicated by the media or all the “look what those crazy Japanese are doing this week” blog posts out there, and so our view of Japan is shifted towards the bizarre. The way we perceive crime in other countries is affected by this phenomenon of selective information, too. There’s a show called World’s Greatest TV which highlights various television from around the world, and they have a segment about crimes that happened to be caught on video. Due to the video sources mostly coming from U.S., America is overrepresented in this show, and Japanese viewers who see crime after crime might get a negative view of the U.S. despite the fact that the video was only selected on its entertainment value. Bottom line, the next time you see sensational news from somewhere in the world, try to get more information before forming an opinion, if you can.
