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Has anybody else ever felt like they were completely and utterly overwhelmed by where they were for irrational or inexplicable reasons?
Whenever I walked the streets of Tokyo, even with a group of fellow foreigners like me and with a year's worth of Japanese language learning under my belt, I felt a very acute yet impermeable uneasiness, like I wanted to go back to my hotel room and stay there to watch TV, I felt as though the flashing lights and the people and the sounds were converging in on me, and I had to go.
Two years later I went to India, and navigated the most crowded, the most loud, the most smelly, and the most chaotic streets I have ever seen in my life. Never before had I imagined horns and streets to be this loud and common, and groups of this amount of people and the sheer volume I was seeing was inconceivable. Pile on top of that the disfigured cripples who panhandled for money, the mal-nourished children rubbing their stomachs and mouths, the hunch-backed old crones, the touts and scammers trying to suck you dry of every rupee you have, the vigilance needed in order to not step in cow shit, and finally, the constant and ever-present fear of theft, murder, or rape, if you're a woman.
Yet for all of these things I felt in India, It never came close to the level of fear I experienced when walking through the avenues of Akihabara, or anything else for that matter. For all the terrors I experienced or was at risk of experiencing in India, I went on with a quiet yet collected professionalism, even as my tennis shoes were stolen from the temple I visited. In Japan there was something different, and obviously something that would make me feel worse than what I did in India. In fact, living in Las Vegas Nevada, I get the same feeling I got in Tokyo as I do whenever I have the misfortune of visiting the strip, which gives me the same shivers and chills that Tokyo does, with similar anxious effects. Does anybody else know this feel?
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That's just anxiety, anon. Consult a psychologist.
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>>1166652
So that's you, friend
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>>1166654
I thought anxiety was an unsettling feeling and nervousness? How can that translate to being underwhelmed?
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>ever-present fear of theft, murder, or rape, if you're a woman.
All of these are relatively uncommon India; I'm sorry to see so much propaganda on this board from /pol/tards. Rape included, even compared to parts of the fully developed world.
It's the nature of the high-profile cases and the fact that the national news reports on it, that has given fodder to folks looking to fetishize Indian behavior.
obligatory sage
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In Tokyo, there's just a negative vibe bro. That's we expected when 8 million die and you're forced to rebuild.
Visit places like Denmark and Finland, you'll feel as happy as ever. And if you don't talk to a therapist
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You're insecure about your socioeconomic status and don't like it when people have more money than you
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I live in NY and I experience the same feelings you described about Tokyo every day. Theres nothing natural about living in a large metropolis, and I always feel like the weight of this whole city will come crashing down on itself due to all the resources and effort it takes to run it. Its like society is hanging on a fine thread and it takes very little to disturb that thread and watch it fall to the ground. Also anxiety fucks me up big time.
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I always get this the first day in a new country, I consider it part of an adjustment period to the new culture. So after I arrive and drop my stuff in the hotel, I just walk around and look at things for a tiny bit, then head to sleep. The next day things are always 100x better.
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In Japan I kind of get this worry about offending people, given all of the strict and unwritten social rules there.
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>>1167057
>t. Indian
here's your three rupies
(PS: India is shithole)
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>>1166652
You're a pussy. The best part about Tokyo is how hectic it is and strolling around alone
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>>1168673
you guys are just talking about the industrial cesspools in the northwest that are typically posted here.
I come from South India and we have an Eastern European HDI and more civic sense.
In most places this is realistically about as dirty as things are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtYhto-TVxo
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>>1166652
The feeling you're thinking of is shame
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>>1168671
you are a foreigner they give you a pass and expect you to behave like a barbarian.
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Before you even mentioned the Strip that's exactly what I was thinking of. I drove cross country a few years ago and hadn't slept or ate anything for a day and a half, almost driving the whole way because my friend couldn't be trusted. He fucked off to a brothel so I was stuck wandering Vegas for the first time at like midnight, just looking for a place to eat. The idea of going to 1 of 3 Gordon Ramsey restaurants, or that Flamingo based casino that smells like sun tan lotion, or the fake Paris promenade complete with 1/3 scale monument of the Eiffel, or being constantly asked by security of I knew where I was, or this is a private area or whatever. Not to mention that its not a sleepless city, after 11pm it seems most places besides the slot machines themselves are deserted. I ordered some mixed drink and pondered at video poker, saw a Cheetah Girls based lingerie show for high rollers, went to the hotel shop and bought a bottle of Tito's and drank half of it before passing out in the hotel room.
Its not just the overwhelming sense that you're insignificant, but the fact that there's a level of consumerism that far exceeds your own expectations, like the world is this uninterruptable machine of cash handling viscera. Like buying a steak from STEAK would only grease the wheel for a millisecond before a group of ball gown wearing women bought a grand worth of Filet mignon.
It just felt very cynical, inhumane even. So I understand your feeling of anxiety and existential dread. The lack of homeless people also created a vacumn of inhumanity. I feel like I need to give a dollar to a dude for no reason just to reset the perception of greed or something.
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