A bicycle was speeding down the shopping street, which was shaded by an arcade

Bicycle riding through a shopping street
Bicycle riding through a shopping street
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In an era when there were no smartphones and Internet cafes were rare in some countries, my main means of gathering information as a backpacker was word of mouth and the information notebooks that were available at cheap hotels. If I heard of something interesting over there, I would go there, and if I heard of something delicious over here, I would try it. At the hotel, I would lie on my bed and leaf through my handwritten information notebooks. It was interesting to note that even though there were backpackers of various nationalities, the languages in the handwritten information notebooks were unevenly written. The overwhelming majority of the notes were written in Japanese. In comparison, there were few entries by Westerners. In Japan, there are still diaries written by a salaryman samurai who lived in the Genroku period and was fond of drinking and women, and who wrote gossipy notes. I had the impression that the Japanese were good correspondents.

Recently, however, I have changed my mind that the Japanese are not so scrupulous. To be precise, I am beginning to think that East Asians are basically good correspondents, not “only” Japanese. My information gathering method has changed from information notebooks to posts on GOOGLE MAP, and when I look at the posts on the Internet, I notice that there are a great many posts from Taiwan. The average amount of writing is probably higher than in Japan. The food stall I happened to find was not particularly famous, but the number of reviews was easily over 300. This is very different from India, where there are not so many postings and many of them are inaccurate, and it made me seriously feel the difference between the Chinese culture, which has preserved authentic history since ancient times, and the Indian culture, which was not interested in preserving its history in writing.

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日本語
Sep 2024 IN THE CITY TAIWAN

PHOTO DATA

No

12646

Shooting Date

Mar 2024

Posted On

September 11, 2024

Modified On

September 25, 2024

Place

Kaoshiung, Taiwan

Genre

Street Photography

Camera

SONY ALPHA 7R V

Lens

ZEISS BATIS 2/40 CF

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