the unofficial website of Jody McIntyre
They call it tourist season
so why can’t we hunt them? (a mini-rant.)
Alright.
To everyone who visits temples and shrines and shows complete disrespect for them, like the jerks who were at the Daibutsu in Kamakura: fuck you. I’m sure the Daibutsu doesn’t care – he’s been meditating for 1000 years and he’s seen worse than you in that time. But the Buddhists who visit him to worship certainly do. Would you act this way in a church back home?
And to the people posing for photos in front of the atomic bomb dome in Hiroshima: fuck you with a spoon. This is a monument to an absolute atrocity and it’s fine to want to show that to your friends, but why do you need to be in the photo too? "Hey, never mind the dome. Look at me!"
OK, I’m done here.
I think people have different motives for taking pictures. I boggle sometimes at people standing around London, having their photos taken in front of not the tourist attractions, but signposts that name the tourist attractions. Similarly I don’t think that being in a picture in front of the dome is necessarily “look at me”; it could also be “I was here. I want to remember”. It could also be, and probably is, “This is how I always do pictures of places that I am, and I haven’t engaged my brain to note that this is a little different to most tourist spots”.
Agreed with the tourists in temples, though. Grrrrrrrr.