Culture relativity

When you are living in a foreign Country, your mind is always in a "Relativity" mode-meaning you are always comparing the culture, the people, the food, the social life etc.

Basically comparing anything and everything.

The "standards" that we set are from what we have seen back home. Yesterday while returning back from work, i witnessed a small incident which made yet another dent to those "standards".
On my rather longish walk back home, there is this narrow stretch of road which is a one-way only for vehicles excluding cycles. Usually unlike India, drivers here are more law abiding.
But yesterday i saw a car approaching from the wrong side. He probably did not notice the one-way sign.

But thats not the point. What happened next completely flummoxed me!

All of a sudden a cyclist dude coming in the opposite direction, stopped mid road facing the car speeding from the opposite direction.The car braked hard and screeched to a stop, literally centimeters away from the cyclist.

Now i thought this cyclist dude has had it. My mind started churning out pictures of a street fight and volleys of curses. I was ready to shoot the scene for a icaught moment.

But hang on, this is not the streets of Bangalore or hyderabad or Delhi.

The cyclist dude in a very polite manner informed the guy in the car that this is a one way and he is driving in the wrong direction. The driver apologized profusely and thanked the cyclist and turned the car back.

eh! Thats it? No "tera baap ka road hain kya"(Is this your father's road?) or "tu saale, kya commisioner hain kya" (are you the commisioner here?) dialogues??

But Having seen hundreds of duels on the roads of Bangalore just coz people don't want to let go of their ego, this small incident was a welcome change. And sure did make a deep dent to my "standards".

すみだのはなび-Sumida Fireworks show

The slacker blogger is back :-)



Yesterday, In a quest to quench my thirst for exploring Tokyo, I went down to the Sumida River in Asakusa. The Hanabi (fireworks) season usually begins around this time of the year and the Sumida firework show is by far the biggest and oldest.

Legend has it the first firework began as early as 1733! Wow..thats pretty old!
Legend also has it some 20,000 fireworks are blasted. Not sure about this though, the crackers were blasting non stop for over an hour and at the end of the show, i had a bad neck pain :(
The one thing that strikes you almost immediately in Asakusa they were so many people!

About 100,000 easily! And that's a lot of people for a fireworks show. My expectations soared when i saw the crowd but i was slightly let down by the show.Only slightly though. I mean, if the same kind of crackers were burst for over an hour,one tends to get distracted rather easily.
But with a lot of cute Kimono-clad Japanese girls around, there was much to keep me occupied.

Overall i enjoyed the show per se.

Some photos here...

The crowd in the station...Totally Jam packed!



This is what i meant by "cute-Kimono clad-Japanese-girls".




A part of 100,000 strong crowd ! Notice how people are sitting on the road. The trick is finding a a good spot for the view. It was crazy humid and beers were guzzled down as fast as they came.





And finally let the show begin..........!



The colours were vibrant.





So, with my thirst for exploration quenched, we returned back sweating and dripping :)