Revisit

My official Japan Website:

http://www.avexnet.or.jp/jonathanwong 

Here's the link to my first Japanese Music Video:

「君は薔薇より美しい」(You're more beautiful than a rose)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KTAm_phrOY

A TV travelogue producer recently told me an interesting story about traveling to a foreign country for work and talking about public transportation with a local.  He asked the local, “do you know how many subway lines there are in this city?” to which the local answered “there’s the #1, the #2, the #3, the #4…the orange one, the yellow one and some others…”.  To the local’s amazement, the producer then responded, “there are actually 8”, before proceeding to describe specific destinations within each route.

 The point of this story is not that the producer was particularly well informed – he should’ve been since he was preparing to shoot there. The point is rather that the local, having lived there for so long, had grown unfamiliar to the parts of his surroundings over time, and knew even less than someone who was just visiting.  This might have happened for a couple of reasons.

 First of all, living and working somewhere probably means you have very specific habits and places you frequent; over time, anything that falls out of those particular areas will most likely be slowly forgotten. Secondly, as they say, “familiarity breeds contempt”; the better we know something or some place, the less we take interest in its merits.

 Coming back to Hong Kong after a month of work in Japan, I can totally identify with the “local” in the above story.  Struggling to get used to daily and working life in Tokyo, I learned things about that environment that I have long since taken for granted in Hong Kong.  With that being said, I now definitely have a whole new appreciation for what I’ve been missing here.  It’s good to be back.

 JWo