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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

> sometimes the crowds are a bit bigger than I would like

I think that's really metropolitan Japan in a nutshell, lol.

True, but I was actually referring to the countryside! I live near a large-ish park that is very peaceful and quiet all year, but when the cherry blossoms bloom it gets so crowded that it’s almost unrecognizable.

Metropolitan Japan is indeed on another level, though. I once visited Ueno Park while the cherry blossoms were in bloom and it was just a sea of people. This was pre-covid, and I still found it a bit gross. Still had a great time that day, though!

On the flip side, when I first saw Ueno park I thought it was incredibly ugly and barren. Then when the cherry blossoms came it was completely transformed overnight. I didn’t stay through until Summer to see the full season, but the park definitely wasn’t worse with the cherry blossoms, despite the people.

What makes it extra annoying is that Japan is a collective culture which means that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time.

But maybe it's also a human thing. My own country has a long coastline yet everyone seems to single out one single beach where everyone congregates.

Most people don't do things because they like them, but because they enable their relationships with other humans - so they can talk about something with them, compare their experiences, etc etc. This really is the conceptual basis for mass-culture; in Japan they've just accepted it a bit more openly than elsewhere.

This is like beach season in South Korea. June 30th, Haeundae is deserted and has a few people looking around. July 1st hits and it is completely packed until Aug 31. Then Sept 1 hits and it is deserted again.

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