Obi-wan Kenobi said it best: a lot of the reality we perceive depends on our point of view. I’ve talked before about how foreign visitors to Japan are sometimes shocked — shocked! — to see what appear to be Nazi swastikas on maps here, but of course these are different symbols entirely, left-facing swastikas called manji that are used to denote the location of a Buddhist temple. The other day I attended a musical performance held by my son’s elementary school in which the students proudly showed off their considerable brass band skills while the parents listened. After the performacne was over, I volunteered to help put the heavier instruments away, and I happened to notice that one of the female students was wearing socks with a rather famous logo embroidered on them: the iconic Playboy bunny. I’m just guessing, but I’ll bet most sixth grade girls in the U.S. wouldn’t have socks sporting this particular image, however in the context of Japan, the logo is just a general image of America and thus, kakko ii (cool). It’s similar to the tendency of Japanese to wear funny English T-shirts with messages like “Hamburger Friend: I feel happiness when I eat him” and never consider what the words might actually mean. Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing shirts with interesting phrases written in foreign languages or anything.
