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Comment by lmarcos | Hacker News Reader

Agree. A bit off topic: living in a foreign country allows you to progressively discover those little differences in comparison to your own country: the way people say good morning, the way people wait (or not) for the light to turn green, paper bags or plastic ones for grocery shopping?...

I find those popular places (e.g., Yosemite, Eiffel tower, etc.) to be the less interesting parts of foreign countries. But sure, we all cannot afford living N years in every foreign country you may want to discover.

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I find it hard to believe that anyone could visit Yosemite and not find it to be one of the best parts of the USA

I think you're talking about different things.

Yosemite could be breathtaking, but not interesting (because it feels very foreign) the way that a huge high school football game or a typical American diner might be interesting to non-American eyes.

(In case it's not obvious, I've never been to the USA)

Depends what you mean by best. I live in Japan, and if you look at Mt Fuji it certainly is very pretty, and some people are very impacted by that, but there’s little depth beyond that to me, whereas there’s infinite depth diving into the actual people and culture that makes up Japan, reveling in the mundane. And you’ll never find that no matter how much you look at Mt. Fuji.

There’s a vast difference between being in a place for the entertainment value of seeing nice things, vs actually immersing in that place - and personally I prefer the latter over the former.

It's indeed beautiful... But that sensation only lasts a few hours (in my limited experience), whereas living the mundane lasts a few years.

Not to mention cultural differences that are so ingrained that it’s hard to imagine people could consider things differently.

It’s become clear to me after visiting other (Western!) cultures that many things, e.g. political views that are as obvious as gravity here, are considered both incorrect and weird elsewhere.

It makes it easier to consider problems with impartial eyes once you’ve seen immovable truths challenged like this a couple of times.

For me this is a prime reason why we need to solve air travels climate problem. To develop our societies forward we need to engage with each other in person, for prolonged times. To be able to better understand the world we live in and to learn from each other.

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