Travel Advisory
Wednesday, 27 June 2007Traveling to new countries and talking to children both provide similar opportunities. In the context of each, one has no history, no stereotype (at least from my experience on the individual level), and a blanket assumption of honesty. Which makes a great platform for finally getting to be all of those things you wanted to be when you were a child but didn’t have the time, energy, funds, or nerve to pursue as an adult.
For a while I was inclined to introduce myself as a world class surfer, but bailing on my first wave would be a dead giveaway. I’ve also had aspirations to be a fireman, a para-glider, and a pilot. But I’d never imagine that I’d find myself pretending to be Highly Contagious Disease Researcher for the CDC.
It wasn’t planned; it just happened all of the sudden. I was at dinner with some friends and I was playing with one of their daughters K. We were shooting the shoot, when the words popped out of my mouth: “Do you know what cooties are?” K knew what I was talking about immediately. Suspiciously, since I am a boy, she looked at me. “Yes, I know about cooties,” she said. Curious whether it was the American or Japanese half of her that knew about this, I asked if there were cooties in Japan. “No, there aren’t, but there are cooties in Australia, New Zealand, and America.”
I then asked if her parents had taught her about cooties. But the knowledge hadn’t come from parents or aunts or uncles or an older generation, but from a friend, whose friend had told her, whose friend had in turn told her. Interesting that the youth are so proactive in supporting education of such communicable diseases while there is hardly a whisper of it amongst the adult population. What’s even more interesting, though, is how this knowledge propagates itself without the help of the older generations. Amazing, isn’t it, that there is a whole culture, vernacular, believe system, and caste that exists from year to year, and the only cure is puberty.
This young culture is curious, especially in light of indigenous cultures, such as the Fijian culture, which are slowly being exchanged for western and consumerist cultures. While many of the traditions are still observed, few know where the traditions come from, many are losing their language (and in the interim speaking it with a foreign accent), and the only person alive who knows all 300 dialects of the Fijian language is a British scholar. I don’t know if there’s any way for these cultures to learn from the youth culture. But if you’re more of the mind of cultural prevention than cultural preservation, Japan’s the place to be to avoid cooties.
Comments