Japan makes the best bourbon, denim and burgers, writes Tom Downey.
It's easy to dismiss Japanese re-creations of foreign cultures as faddish and derivative—just other versions of the way that, for example, the new American hipster ideal of Brooklyn is clumsily copied everywhere from Paris to Bangkok. But the best examples of Japanese Americana don't just replicate our culture. They strike out, on their own, into levels of appreciation and refinement rarely found in America. They give us an opportunity to consider our culture as refracted through a foreign and clarifying prism.
Jason Kottke points out that the same is true of coffee.
And it's not just stuff; consider Kazuo Ishiguro, who moved to England as a child and gained a startlingly clear view a particular kind of Englishness. These are all things that never truly existed until something new was inspired by the idea of them—a process as conservative as it is creative.
