John’s newsletter 2/52

John’s Newsletter 2/52

Hello, welcome to week 2 of my newsletter. I don’t yet know what format this newsletter should take. This week I have no updates on my website to tell you about. Instead, I want to share some travel tips and my poorly formed thoughts about British food.

Japan Travel Tips

Big Blue Bag

Last year I went to Japan, and it was really great. We took trains across a chunk of the country, saw lots of beautiful things, and ate some amazing food. To achieve this, we traveled with tiny suitcases - which is generally the right way to travel. But also, we were in Tokyo during the New Year's sales and wanted to buy a bunch of cool Japanese clothes. We also ended up buying lots of high-quality instant ramen, which is extremely bulky. This stuff wouldn’t fit into our suitcases - so following the advice of a friend, we bought one of these blue giants from Ikea.

When you find yourself in a foreign country with lots of giant trousers and ramen, one of these bags is the perfect solution to getting your stuff home. Put everything inside it, wrap it in cellophane at the airport, and check it in the hold. Unless you're transporting really fragile objects, there’s no need to have a hard, expensive suitcase, and this saves you from having to lug a half-empty bag around while you are traveling.

Downsides of the Big Blue Bag

Unfortunately, the process of getting this thing to the airport was terrible. Even though it was the middle of the day, every train we got on was hyper-busy. I felt quite embarrassed trying to fit myself with a suitcase and this giant bag into an already crowded train. I’d resolved to just get a taxi if I do something similar again.

Solution to the Problems Caused by the Big Blue Bag

Thanks to Craig Mod, who writes about The Magical Japanese Art of Luggage Forwarding, I now know that it's possible to never carry your suitcase anywhere in Japan - and also that it's possible to not carry your big blue bag on the subway. Instead, you can send bags from the airport to your hotel, then from one hotel to another. You finally send everything back to the airport to await you when you leave. This sounds like the dream version of traveling and next time I go to Japan I will be doing this all the time.

Is British Food Bad?

Is British food bad? This is a question that is discussed at least once or twice a day by people all around the world in 2020. Aisling McCrea concluded that it was bad, and tried to explain why. They do a good job of describing the actual state of British food, which is that lots of the food available in England is better than you can get anywhere else in the world, but with the goodness spread very thinly. You can find amazing stuff, but in many smaller towns, you’ll struggle to find anything worth eating. This is not true if you go to, let's say, Japan.

They ask why then is there not a stronger food culture. They come up with the answer that “British food is bad because British people are too repressed to cook food correctly.”

This is obviously a funny theory. But I don’t find it convincing¹, and I’m not going to bother explaining it here - because you can just read their article if you want to know more. Instead, I am here to give you my opinion about why British cooking is lacking. I’ve also done no actual research about whether this is true - and it’s probably not.

It’s the Industrial Revolution

During the industrial revolution, Britain industrialized harder, faster, and better than anywhere else. In 1801, 20% of the population lived in towns and cities; by 1851, half the population was urbanized; and by 1901, two-thirds of the population lived in cities². This urbanization happened at a scale and speed that had never been seen before, and it was also the first time in human history that this style of industrial urbanization had happened.

Undergoing an unprecedented schism from a traditional society to a new form of society smashed traditional associations and cultures. People were uprooted from the lifestyles of their ancestors, moved into horrible slum housing in places like Spitalfields and Atherstone. People had their connection to “The Land” severed and replaced with a connection to dark, satanic mills and power looms.

Anyway, I imagine that this rapid transition meant that the food culture that Britain had was smashed, and has never had an opportunity to recover.

It’s also possible that England just has quite bad weather, where for a lot of the year not much grows. If you just compare Britain with other places that have a similar climate (Holland, Germany), then the food in England starts to look pretty damn appealing. Is there actually anywhere that has a climate similar to England that does have better food? I don’t know.

That’s all folks

Thanks for reading! Next time I might write something about software!