Aquarium People-Watching, in greater depth

As promised in an earlier comment, I wanted to share about my return visit to the aquarium Thursday afternoon. If you've been reading regularly, you'll remember that we were challenged to spend 5 minutes observing one exhibit. Always the meta-observer, I watched the people just about as much as I watched the jellyfish. Having time to return to the aquarium today, I planned to sit by the same exhibit. Despite any intentions I entered with, people-watching became the focus. I started to take notes on what people said as they walked up to, or right by, the exhibit. Because I can't capture the "glance and go" cell phone camera crowd, I stuck with recording those people who commented in the proximity of the jellyfish. Now I will greatly overreach in cataloging their comments.

(Taking notes by the jellies. Seth will probably observe that my sitting there with a pencil changed the situation, but I think most people were too self-focused to notice me. Besides, with the comments they were making, what did they have to hide?)

Most common were polite little blips of comments, proof that the seer existed, and general, approved of the jellyfish. They place the seer in relation to another visitor and, I can only assume, work to build a bond between the two. "Oooh, jellyfish." "Look, (insert person here, such as grandma, mom, etc." "Cool." or "Coooooool!" The word cool was repeated by hundreds of guests. Am I becoming an English curmudgeon because I wanted them to use a word that meant something, one that couldn't be used to describe absolutely any animal in the building?

While cool functions as a judgmental statement, albeit a positive one, there were also other jugmental statements that weren't so kind. "They're not cute" made me wonder about the girl's standards and the general human-centered viewpoint we bring to aquariums. "I hate jellyfish. They hurt." interested me because this woman was the only person who commented on anything that either didn't relate to the senses or only related to the sense of sight. If you read the Aquarium article I recommended previously (http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/newberry_su04.html), you'll consider the irony that we use almost exclusively visual language to describe aquariums, despite the fact that many aquarium residents have no use for vision.

Although I now think that I might backtrack on my previous statement just a little. People did try to make the jellyfish seem more less alien by comparing them to more familiar items. Most common was mushrooms, but one person mentioned cauliflower. One might argue that they chose items that carry connotations of particular smells, textures, and tastes, but I want to straddle the line on reading too much into these overheard statements. :)

"Bonk. Bonk. It's like that movie where they're hopping on the jellyfish." "They're upside down." This only stood out because I witnessed many Nemo searches in the coral reef exhibit, and one person said he spotted Bruce in the kelp tank. While all of these are technically impossible since they're imaginary characters, I especially think it's unlikely that there's a great white shark in the tank featuring Monterey Bay wildlife. It just serves to reinforce for me the powerful pull that Disney has on popular culture.

(In case you wanted to know more about the spotted jelly.
Yes, all the comments were made in the presence of this sign.)

We also have the 'bad science' people, the ones that prove that ocean literacy needs to be taught at some level.
"The legs fell off that one." Oh yes, those elusive jellyfish legs. They probably did fall off, didn't they?
"We already saw the jellyfish over there." This isn't really bad science as much as a lack of understanding about ocean diversity. Does this person go to the zoo and stop after they've seen one primate?
"Are these anenomes?" I'm guessing this person had never seen an anenome or a jellyfish before, and perhaps was illiterate. Or is that too harsh. When Seth worked at Disney, he learned to be patient with guests because even normally smart people sometimes left their brains at home when they went on vacation and would ask questions that should be obvious to all. But what about "Look at the spots on their shells." Where do I even start with that one?


Then there were the incomprehensible statements. "Jellyfish aren't as cool as penguins." This could also go under judgement or humanism, but I'm curious about the comparison chart for that one.
"This is just like a wedding I went to." Really? You can see the tank in my photo. Let me know if you have clues. I guarantee that they did not remind me of any weddings I attended, although my imagination is intrigued.

A few people tried to be scientific, even if they didn't necessarily add much to the general school of knowledge. At least they were making observations. "Where are their minds? Maybe inside the tentacles?" "It's gliding. It's falling. It's gliding. Now it's falling. Gliding again." etc.

(This will only make sense to people who have visited the aquarium. I also spent a half hour laying on the floor (out of the way) on the 2nd floor observation area of the deep sea exhibit. I was experimenting with taking photographs of the giant window. I'm on my back with my knees up on the left side of the photo, and my hand is over my stomach. Note how the sea turtle has just come into the space between my hand and my knees, which wasn't planned because the camera was on a ten-second delay.)

(Bad photo, but you get a sense of the crowds at the exhibit. Same tank looking at the first floor.)

Cultural Authenticity

Cultural authenticity is probably a discussion point for all travelers who are also armchair sociologists. What’s meant by cultural authenticity? Is it something we should strive for in our travels, knowing that we’ll never be able to achieve it? Last week, teachers were saying they wouldn’t waste their time visiting Disney because they didn’t want to waste their time on a tourist activity. Yet these same people happily woke in the middle of the night to have an ‘authentic’ experience at the fish market. As I noted in earlier posts, I saw no Japanese visitors at the fish market and no other westerners at Disney. Since Saint Stephen’s took our Chinese visitors to Walt Disney World last year, we obviously thought that it was a worthwhile “must-see” activity.

Is Disney culturally authentic(in Florida or abroad)? I’d argue that it’s not, but I don’t mean that in a pejorative way. It isn’t authentic because you have to pay to enter, because the streets are clean, and because everyone returns to their “real lives” at the end of the day. Work at Disney is an authentic experience for the workers; it is their work, after all, but Disney itself is not. Guests come to escape the authentic-financial worries, a difficult job, the sad realities of a sick child. Authenticity is the daily grind. Are national parks authentic? For nature-lovers, they’re an escape into the majesty of nature, just as Disney is for others.

During this trip, I’ve spent a lot of time by myself. This is my choice; I notice a lot more of the activity around me when I’m not talking to anyone, and when I can’t puzzle through foreign sign meanings with someone else who speaks English. Plus, this way I can stop whenever something looks interesting and move on when it ceases to interest me. In that way, I’ve navigated the supermarket, the post office, libraries, and jogging paths. I also spend hours on the computer. If my life in Florida is any measure of authenticity (no guarantee that it is-I spent about ¼ of my year elsewhere) my trip sounds a whole lot like my real life.

Another example that hit a personal note is with our free day last Saturday. As I mentioned, many people took the train south to Kamakura, to see “real” Japan. I stayed in Tokyo.* Most people were optimistic that there was so much to do in Japan - no choice was wrong or better than another - yet, a few said derisively, “Tokyo's a city. I could go to New York if I wanted to visit a city.” I have three responses I’d like to give to the people who had this viewpoint. First, all cities are not alike. As I’m quite familiar with New York, I can, in fact, say that New York is not like Tokyo, although Tokyo is a city with Western features. (Aren’t others as curious as me about what’s been adapted from the west and how these “western features” are used in the east?) Second, Tokyo is the real Japan for 12 million Japanese people! It may not be historic Japan, but it is their lives. Finally, only a few other teachers on this trip live in or near New York City. Are they planning a trip there anytime soon? Even so, they’ll still be viewing the city with “tourist” eyes.

We’re neither here nor there with this post; I have no conclusions or answers. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about and wanted to share.

*Another side note about technology and travel today. Most of us are downloading and backing up our photos nightly, then resetting our memory cards in the morning. Last night, another group member set up a snapfish account for the group and personally downloaded over 500 photos. As a member of the group, I can copy them at will and could pretend I also visited Kamakura. I’m not planning on that. But this site will be great for shots of me since I’m in none of the shots I take---I don’t do the “profile picture” thing, holding the camera in front of my face. Even limited to my small group, the member contributions of each of our own photos means that I’ll have access to 10s of thousands of personal photos! This is a great example of social networking, bottom-up content creation on the world wide web. No one’s controlling the types of photos I post, if they’re appropriate, if they were taken by me, if they were even taken in Japan. Had I not brought my camera on the trip, I could even freeload and post no pictures while taking for myself the photos others had posted.

The answer...

...to the question a few days ago.

The favorite Disney character in Japan is...


He's everywhere-on Disney property, in Toyko shops, on Okinawa signs, on children's backpacks! I swear, they'd replace Minnie with Stitch if they could.