You know how being from a place colors your perspective of a place? A few years ago I asked friends who were not American and had lived in Tokyo, Dehli and London before moving to NYC if NYC was really odd or if it's a big city thing and they unequivocally were like no we see real weird shit here.
Because internet: this is not me saying any of the above cities is worse. I havent even been to Tokyo. It was an honest question posed to friends. And the best city in the world is the one you enjoy living in 😘
Having lived in Tokyo nearly half my life now, NYC is *far* weirder, and the wild part is how that weirdness is just Out There On The Streets and everyone just rolls with it.
Tokyo's weirdness is structured and sanitized, NYC's weirdness is 100% chaos magic that cannot be replicated.
Tokyo: you can pay a company to take you on a quasi-legal street kart tour wearing dingy Pokemon onesies
NYC: you can watch dueling buskers fight not 30 feet from a tourist trying to propose to his girlfriend in front of a dude in a ripoff Transformers costume who will demand $10 for the photo
Side note because Maricar mentioned, I did that kart tour in Osaka and it was honestly THE most fun shit ever. I took my 70 y/o Dad and he loved it too 🥰 Great way to see the city, 10/10 recommend!
Incorrect - they are menaces to public safety and one day a dumbass gopro-wielding martyr will rise and get himself seriously injured so the government steps in, as they should have over a decade ago.
I'm reminded of when a friend showed me around Akiba and he denoted that the boundaries of the Otaku Zone are extremely firm - on the other side of a certain street it's 100% normie zone, no dropoff.
I think about that a lot when thinking about "weird Tokyo".
The edges there are a bit blurrier these days - especially as new shops filter into whatever buildings have the cheapest rent - but yes. Everything's allowed as long as it's contained in its little box, just like how there's relatively little LGBTQ presence past the Shinjuku Nichome 'gayborhood.'
My outsider observation of NYC is that New Yorkers tend to think ordinary big city things are unique to New York while *also* thinking that the things that are deeply weird and idiosyncratic about the city are just everyday things experienced by all
It’s amusing
One time I sat down and explained the borough thing to a friend and she was like you know in the us most cities are located in counties not made up of them?
It doesn't help that Alaska also has boroughs and NYC does the confusing thing of having boroughs and counties that are coterminous but also don't share the same name (queens is an exception)
Yep, that was exactly it. Although the reality of NYC boroughs is all over our entertainment (I understood it before I ever went to NYC) and I was a little surprised he hadn't encountered it before.
Also, at my last job I periodically had to do searches for the org's volunteers in certain areas & the counties/boroughs part was initially VERY confusing when I was trying to search by county. I eventually figured it out.
NYC was the first big city I started getting to know as an adult and I always wondered if it was *that* weird because my freak meter is calibrated to SF and LA in the 90s and early 00s which were wild in their own ways. But yeah, NYC is delightfully bonkers. It's not my city, but I love it so much.
I had a stressful afternoon/evening and took a long walk home to clear my headache. Then I remembered godDAMN I love Brooklyn in summertime. This is worth fighting for.
