Why we need Japan to be our weirdtopia －どうして、私たちの変トピアとして日本が必要か－

Utopia was a fictional island, imagined by Thomas More in the book published in 1516.  On Utopia the citizens shared all property, respected each others’ religions, and avoided war.  It was a perfect place, and great for your imagination to escape to if you felt dissatisfied with your own society.

A dystopia is an imaginary bad place.  George Orwell, for example, imagined a country which was in a never-ending war, and where the government spied on people through their televisions.  Perhaps reading about dystopias can also be comforting to people.  Even if your country is having difficulties, at least it is not as bad as the dystopia.

Thinking about Japan, we may need to make a new word for another kind of “topia”.  This word will mean an imaginary place where things are not better or worse than in the real world, just weirder.  People who feel that their lives are boring can enjoy escaping in their imaginations to a “weirdtopia”, where the streets clean themselves and customers who wish to smoke in a restaurant place a special pod around their head to catch the fumes.

Japan seems to be a weirdtopia for many people around the world.  Any story about the country which becomes popular on the internet usually involves strangeness.  Many of these stories are fake or exaggerated.

I read an article this week about a website for speakers of Arabic.  The purpose of the website is to correct Arabic speakers’ misconceptions about Japan, and to deny fake stories which are circulating about the country.  The roads which clean themselves and the special pods for smokers in restaurants are two of these fake stories.

Another popular myth was that teachers in Japan are so well respected that their students wash the teacher’s feet before the lesson.  As an English teacher in Japan, I can say that I like the idea but that sadly it is not true.  Perhaps I could offer a discount to a student who is willing to wash my feet?

In a way, I hope that Japan keeps its image as a weirdtopia.  It makes people happier than to think of it as just another country.

Vocabulary:

dissatisfied – not happy or content with something

weird – strange; unusual; odd

fumes – bad-smelling or poisonous air

fake - untrue

exaggerated – made to sound more extreme or worse than it really is

a misconception – a false or untrue idea

to circulate – to go around; of an idea, to pass from person to person

a myth – a widely held but false story or idea