ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL TONIGHT - AUSTRALIA REVEALED

by juni 62 Replies latest jw friends

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  Stephanus

  Hi Stephanus. Its on 830pm on discovery channel this coming Sunday. I would have dismissed it ordinarily however your input on this topic has me interested....

  That's a good thing, isn't it?

  I've been watching travel and Nat Geo type documentaries for years now, and I find myself disappointed with most of them. By way of example, Japan is one that I love seeing documentaries and travellogues about. They usually start off in Tokyo. They'll feature that dog statue which is supposed to be a popular meeting place for young people going out for a night on the town, and the Ginza district. They'll show you some of the quirky stuff like the "love hotels" and the "compartment hotels". The vast arrays of vending machines from which you can buy just about anything. The pachinko parlours and the sumo stables The park where all the young people meet on Sunday to show off their crazy fashion statements. Then, after 10 minutes or so, the presenter will buy a Bento box on a train platform, board a bullet train, and then zoom of in search of the "real Japan".

  The "real Japan" is usually some far flung village high in the forest encrusted mountains. The presenter will stay at a quaint old Ryokan built of wood and with "real" paper walls. There'll usually be visits to Buddhist temple and other "traditional" sites. And sometimes in deference to the need to arouse "white man's guilt" that many of these shows exhibit, they head off to visit the Ainu. And these latter parts of the show will typically take up the majority of the show, whereas the average Japanese person would probably find that most of it doesn't typify their lives (my gut feeling, anyway).

  And myself, I like all the whizz-bang citified stuff they show at the start. If I wanted to visit a Temple, I live 20 miles from the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. If I want to stay in a quaint country guesthouse, there's plenty of B&Bs just over the mountain from me on the Southern Tablelands, around Bowral and similar towns.

  To me the "real Japan" would be the stuff I can't experience here in Oz - the Sumo restaurants serving up the bulking-up, "secret recipe" stews that the attached Sumo Stable feeds its wrestlers. Sumo matches. Pachinko. The Vending machines. Compartment Hotels. Bento boxes on bullet trains. Department stores where floorwalkers take care of your every materialistic need. The shops selling up to the minute electronics. Of course, the list goes on forever,and I'm kind of repeating myself.

  And it happens in every documentary. In NZ, it'll start in Auckland or Wellington, and then head off into the country in search of the "real New Zealand". In London, it's off in search of the "real England/Britain". From Toronto or Vancouver in search of the "real Canada". Even from Paris to the "real France"! They don't always use the exact term "real wherever", but you soon get the sense of it.

  Well, that's my two cents on the subject, for better or worse!
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  Leolaia

  Hmmmm....what is the real Japan I saw....I guess it is the curry shops in Tokyo, little children carrying a bamboo tree, the gigantic concrete "jacks" piled up on the shore to protect it from tsunamis, super efficient rail transportation, houses in the suburbs with garden plots in the backyard, the deer wandering around Nara, Mister Donut, everywhere so very clean, groups of teenagers using the entrances of office buildings as dancing spots in the evening, a half-sized Statue of Liberty in Momoishi, Jesus' tomb in Shingo, a friendly cartoon dog that teaches English idioms on the subway, garage bands lining the sidewalks of a Tokyo park on a Sunday afternoon as teenagers wearing garish club outfits walk about, tasty soft-serve cones, sitting in a bus behind a guy eager to try out his English, tent cities of homeless people in a city park, canteloupes selling for $30 equivalent, temples for WWII kamakaze pilots that served GREAT teriyaki barbeque, homes with old-fashioned wooden waterworks, vending machines with Pocari Sweat, people standing in a subway car holding on with one hand and texting with their cell phones in the other, wearing kimonos inside out, nailbiting sumo tournament on the telly, a pseudo-Arabic style restaurant that serves tasteless egg rolls, feeling totally safe no matter where you are....
• 

  misspeaches

  Hi Stephanus. Its on 830pm on discovery channel this coming Sunday. I would have dismissed it ordinarily however your input on this topic has me interested....

  That's a good thing, isn't it?

  Thats an excellent thing.

  I agree with you as well. The things you mentioned you would like to see in a documentary about another land is what I would want to see as well. I find it all very intriguing.
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  Stephanus

  Hmmmm....what is the real Japan I saw....I guess it is the curry shops in Tokyo, little children carrying a bamboo tree, the gigantic concrete "jacks" piled up on the shore to protect it from tsunamis, super efficient rail transportation, houses in the suburbs with garden plots in the backyard, the deer wandering around Nara, Mister Donut, everywhere so very clean, groups of teenagers using the entrances of office buildings as dancing spots in the evening, a half-sized Statue of Liberty in Momoishi, Jesus' tomb in Shingo, a friendly cartoon dog that teaches English idioms on the subway, garage bands lining the sidewalks of a Tokyo park on a Sunday afternoon as teenagers wearing garish club outfits walk about, tasty soft-serve cones, sitting in a bus behind a guy eager to try out his English, tent cities of homeless people in a city park, canteloupes selling for $30 equivalent, temples for WWII kamakaze pilots that served GREAT teriyaki barbeque, homes with old-fashioned wooden waterworks, vending machines with Pocari Sweat, people standing in a subway car holding on with one hand and texting with their cell phones in the other, wearing kimonos inside out, nailbiting sumo tournament on the telly, a pseudo-Arabic style restaurant that serves tasteless egg rolls, feeling totally safe no matter where you are....

  Sounds like exactly the Japan I'd love to see! The hi-tech, clean efficiency. Sumo on tv. Eating outlets of various quality. Cartoon dogs. Strange western flourishes/references/adaptations like the Jesus tomb and the Mini Statue of Liberty. The quirky teenage/youth stuff on Sundays. Heck, even the homeless tents and the ridiculously priced melons are the sort of stuff that I'd be wanting to see, because it's THERE, and it's REAL. And you might have to explain/expand a few things to me, like the bamboo tree, "pocari sweat" and Mr Donut... Did you ever post a thread about your Japan adventure?

  I'm not so much against old in favour of the new, per se, I just like it to all fit contextually. and documentaries are woefully inadequate for the task, especially if the documentary maker is trying to weave a story into the images that you're not wanting to read.
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  Leolaia

  Indeed, lots of synchrony between traditional ways and new technology/culture...I would imagine you'd enjoy it quite a bit.

  I had a series of threads when I was in my second trip to Japan (but the picture links no longer work):

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/74236/1.ashx

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/74523/1.ashx

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/74714/1.ashx

  Some of my pictures of Japan:

  
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  ozziepost

  Oh, I'm feeling nostalgic - for japan. There's something about the country that grabs me - a few of those pics bring it all back. Such pleasant memories.
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  juni

  Thanks Leolaia for the posts of Japan - beautiful country and people.

  I agree with you Stephanus. The only way for a person to get knowledge about a country in the way they like is to go there themselves. The Documentaries are made by producers who have their own perspective and agenda.

  I SAY WE START A NEW "WORLDWIDE TOUR FUND" FOR ALL OF US SO WE CAN ALL VISIT THESE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

  Who wants to second the motion?

  Juni
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  ozziepost

  juni:

  I already do!!
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  Sunnygal41

  Just a thought, folks, about the "we were here first" train of thought applying to the aboriginals.

  Remember they were migrants too, having come to this vast continent long ago, so I have trouble saying it's anyone's land. The past is the past, it's what we do now that's important.

  Ozzie...........you are absolutely correct, and the aboriginal peoples all over the world for the most part will tell you that they don't "own" the land, that it belongs to the Creator, or the Great Spirit, etc. But, they have a quality that greed has pushed out of much of the European mindset........they believe/d that they are/were stewards of the land, and that they have/had an obligation to it and the other inhabitants to walk gently on it. History shows that this was not just talk, they truly practiced what we, today, call a "green" lifestyle. When they started to move away from these practices and adopt the ways of the Europeans was when things started to go downhill within their culture. Fortunately, there have remained a small group who have retained the ancient traditions and practices and are educating today's young people from all cultures and sharing it with the larger world.

  Terri
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  Stephanus

  I don't know that I'd categorise the nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle as being particularly "green". Most Aboriginal tribes, by way of example, would camp in an area and eat what grew and roamed thaere naturally, until it was exhausted, then they'd move on to the next area. Sometime later, when the area had regenerated, they'd moved back. Okay for species that can adapt to that kind of exploitation of an area, but I imagine that that lifestyle took its toll and was responsible for many extinctions, especially when you take "fire farming" into consideration. Quite simply, the idea was to burn an area of bush so as to make it easier to hunt animals, either spearing them as they escaped the fire, or providing them with less cover and making the hunt easier. Many Australian natives plants need intense heat for their seeds to germinate, so this hunting method worked out well for them. Now the "native caretaker" myth suggests that groups that practiced this were doing so in harmony with the environment, whereas the true case may be that the environment harmonised itself with the way the fire farmers did things, with flora and fauna that couldn't take the fire farming dying out, and those that could surviving and thriving. A case in point may well be the Wollomi Pine. A tree supposedly left over from the Mesozoic Era (dinosaurs, people!) it was discovered tucked away in a ravine in the Blue Mountains where it (and presumably its ancestors) had never been touched by fire, man-made or otherwise. Who knows how many other such species have become extinct since the arrival of the Aborigines and their "fire farming"?

  In North America, some Native American tribes are known historically to have stampeded gigantic herds of bison over cliffs, only taking the few carcases they could possibly use, and left the rest to rot. That's hardly the "take only what you need" mythos of the hunter-gatherer society.

  Agriculture, on the other hand, leaves a smaller ecological footprint. You only farm the land needed to produce stuff for you and your family, and the rest can get on with it's life. Agriculture represents true harmony with nature, because you only get anything out if you put in first. You must practice conservation by holding back seeds and animals for next year's crop and herds. You give to the land in the form of sowing, fertilising and caring for your animals and you practice further conservation by preserving and pickling the excess harvest.

  I know this appears to be "Devil's Advocacy", and I probably look like I'm being contrary and difficult, but I've been considering a lot of this stuff, long and hard, for many years.