Coming back to America after being away for six years for a short trip is nice. I get to experience America almost as a kind of foreign tourist. I can soak up the joy of the absurd and, as a former resident, notice all of the small changes that go unnoticed by the current residents. I'm still mostly fluent in the culture and the long-term problems and issues I'd have to face is if I were moving don't apply.
Going shopping at H-E-B and Target is fun. If I'm honest with myself, I miss amount of choice available in your average Target or Supermarket. Take the cheese section, there's Colby jack, Swiss, Jalapeno monterey jack, and probably 10 other varieties in block, slice, grated, and cube form. Compared with "melting cheese" (as opposed to cheese that doesn't melt?) and fake cheese slices in Japan, it's hard not to get envious.
I'm not a huge consumer of BBQ sauce, but just look at this selection.
A different sauce for every day of the year. Even the Asian section is quite good these days. Plenty of options for nori and other basics. You can even buy bottles of unsweetened green tea.
The clothes section's manikins are not slim any longer. They're mostly plus sized. Even the models in the swimsuit section aren't thin, instead also showing plus sized models. It better reflects the clientele and I reckon that's a good thing.
Everything's bigger here. The portions, the roads, and the cars. Part of that is because Texas. The truck density has always been higher here. They drive fast, too. Most roads have highway-level speed limits in Japan (40mph / 65 kph). And when you walk along on the sidewalk next to 3 lanes of cars driving over that speed limit, it doesn't feel safe. Stroads are the worst.
Needing to get in the car to do anything or go anywhere is definitely something I did not miss about America. As far as the eye can see there's solid cars all traveling in the same direction and yet nobody thinks "maybe this doesn't make sense for us all to be traveling independently together. Maybe this is a giant waste of resources and time and money."
Nobody seems to think that there's any other way. That ceding life to the automobile is the way it always has been and the way it always will be. You can feel the hostility of the design to anything isn't a huge metal box.
America is best in small doses. Stay long enough to embrace the absurdness of it all and leave before the reality seeps past the rose-tinted glasses.
