Day 19

So I went to Japantown today. To summarize my experience, I found everything a little shaking. I don't know if I should/would attribute the lack of energy and life to the blackout that recently happened(which I understand contributed a lot to the void) or if daily life in Japantown was usually like this.

The buildings were there, a semi-glossy plasticky fake feel. Sort of the fake tulips placed in front of you at cheap restaurants. It's trying, but not quite achieving anything. The buildings all had a very Japanish feel to the them. From the five-tiered stupa "Peace Pagoda" built to Kintensi food mall, the whole complex had, for me a

nyways, a lack of authenticity. It seemed more of a tourist attraction than an city community catered to Japanese Americans.

Fair or not, I'm comparing Japantown to Chinatown, which to me rings true to what I feel ethnic neighborhoods should be. A place that caters to the needs and wants of that community. But here at Japantown, there were plastic rocks and fake bamboo, all immitating this very flat concept of an older Japanese culture.

Now I guess I can understand that the idea of a very organic Japanese urban growth, when people naturally tend to come together in thier own communities, was kind of killed with Japanese internment during World War II, so it isn't really my place to judge the pain that many of these individuals went through, and the community as a whole. But in the end, it still felt very authoritarian. As in, "We built this place for you, it is our concept of Japanese culture, now

live there".

It all rang a little too hollow for me. Am I right to be feeling this way? Or am I being too callous and judgemental?