October 25 Reflection -Jaxon

 I saw a strong contrast between city and country in all the works we read this week except for "The Memory Police." "The Memory Police" and "Scattered All Over the Earth" have fascinating settings for me, and I especially enjoy reading "Scattered All Over the Earth" although I lack knowledge of Europe. I had to search online a lot to prevent I behave like Knut, who thinks Sushi is from Denmark. I seldom see such a vast appearance of European countries and cities in one story whose setting is in the future. I really like how the author arranges Hiruko's languages. Different from "The Easy Life in Kamusari," Hiruko's language is not grammatically correct, but it contains the most important information, so the author didn't put any explanation to the language. In "The Easy Life in Kamusari," the "dialect" has parenthesis that tells the reader the meanings of the expressions, but I searched online, and I found "Kamusari" is not an actual place in Japan, but other places like Yokohama do exist. 

I found the protagonist in "The Easy Life in Kamusari" has great pride, every time he feels tired or stressed, he tries to be strong only because he doesn't want to be laughed at by others. I feel the pride doesn't come from the city (in my impression, some people look down on the countryside in big cities), and the pride makes him not able to fit into the village well.

"The Memory Police" reminds me of many classic novels like "The Giver," in which people forget about the old world and are required not to recall them. The theme of forgetting also appears a lot in "The Little Woods of Fukushima," where the narrator mentions many times that his memory is not clear enough. I feel in the countrysid ,when people do work, the work is usually tiring, and people don't get many days of rest, as a result, that makes people feel that time passes fast since every day doesn't make a difference. In my opinion, working all year doesn't make a high-quality memory. In the countryside, working, people's memories are not as diverse and clear as those of other people who have time to relax and do some other activities that don't include work.