大都市と小さな都市 2

少なくともこの州ではファションを気にしなくてもよい。自分にとっては大変楽なことである。

Living in a big city like Tokyo was very exciting. It always has new restaurants to visit, new food to taste, new department stores for shopping, new amusement parks, and everything else one can imagine. There are always concerts for popular musicians and singers. There are also many movie selections. Weekly entertainment magazines are filled with information about these activities. Several years ago, Tokyo even had an artificial ski dome. The restaurants are open late, and many of them are open 24 hours. Sometimes one might have difficulty deciding among the many choices. Rarely does one feel that there is nothing to do. Conversely, living in a small city or town is a completely different story. The choices are limited in terms of what one can do. The smaller city usually only has things that were highly popular a short while ago in Tokyo. Lately, this situation is changing a bit and some pop-culture items are arriving earlier, but there is still a time lag. There are some concerts for musicians that were once quite popular, but not now. To attend a concert by a currently popular musician is a very rare opportunity. The weekly event magazine is really thin and choosing a restaurant is often difficult because of the low selection. A resident from a larger town also has a different fashion look and style. There are more fashionable people in big cities. They have the latest clothes, hairstyle, and accessories. Sometimes, just watching people walking in Tokyo is really fun. Often, I will see “goofy looking” people in a small town. According to population statistics, most people in Tokyo were not born and raised there. They moved into Tokyo somewhere in the middle of their life, so they should look the same. Why one might ask, is this the case? This is possibly due to both inspiration and imitation. You see some one dressed fashionably and get inspired and someone else sees you and also gets inspired. As a matter of fact, I don’t care about what to wear in Wonderland, but when I go to Tokyo, I am forced to care about what to wear. There is much more social pressure to try and “fit-in” by being cool and wearing fashionable clothing.