Milan Taught Me the Freedom of Not Caring How Others See You

Europe—though in this case only Milan and Berlin—and I think I was fairly lucky to be able to travel there during this period (Japan’s border control measures were eased right on 2022/9/7), so I’d like to put together some of the things I noticed.

Football-related content is here → Sharing tips for watching the Milan derby

For reference, my history of visiting Europe is: a solo trip during my student days, a honeymoon in Italy, one trip each to the UK, Germany, and Estonia for work, trips to Germany and the Czech Republic for a relative’s wedding, and one visit to a relative’s house in Germany.

Averaged out, that’s about once every 3 to 5 years somewhere. So that’s about the extent of it.

〈The freedom I felt in Milan〉

Above all, people’s styles are completely free.

This isn’t just about “Milan being a fashion capital” or anything like that. I keenly felt something I had long forgotten while in Japan: a way of living that doesn’t worry about how others see you.

On the positive side, this means seeing an elderly grandmother wearing bright red high-top boots, or a white-haired old man working in clothes that look exactly like something an artisan from decades ago would wear—like Alfredo, the character from Cinema Paradiso—and it was genuinely heartwarming and encouraging.

I won’t go into the cases that went the other way. Yeah.

〈Attitudes toward masks〉

In Milan, I’d say about 30% of people wear masks on public transportation. On the streets and in shops, it was zero. Even in museums, people didn’t wear masks. Staff didn’t either.

In Berlin, the stance was that masks are basically worn on public transportation.

That said, the wearing rate was a bit over 50%. As a Japanese person, I made sure to wear a mask every time I rode the train in Berlin anyway.

Quite a few shop staff wore masks. But at the hotel I stayed at, none of the staff or the chefs wore them. I suppose that comes down to individual and organizational judgment as well.

〈Berlin’s sense of sophistication〉

Compared to the freedom of Milan, Berlin carried a certain amount of tension.

In Milan I stopped putting wax in my hair, and in Berlin I somewhat regretted having left the wax behind in Milan. Ha.

Humans apparently perform various unconscious analyses, transformations, and interpretations of visual information.

〈The scarcity of East Asians〉

Coming from the sense I had while in the US (especially Silicon Valley), I was really surprised by how few Chinese people there were. In Milan I only encountered one family working as shop staff, and in Berlin I never encountered any at all.

What I did see a fair amount of in Berlin instead was Korean people. Japanese people were really nowhere to be found (though there were Japanese people at the IFA venue who had come from Japan). There were no Vietnamese people either, and few Indians.

Instead, Berlin had a striking number of people of Middle Eastern background.

Milan, perhaps because it’s a tourist city, draws plenty of Anglo-Saxon Europeans visiting for leisure.

Either way, I got the sense that surprisingly few Japanese people actually come to Europe.

For example, here’s data on the countries of origin of immigrants to Germany. Basically neighboring countries, especially centered on Eastern Europe.

〈The concept of stopping in place〉

The first thing you notice going to Europe is how the streetscape is built around preserving so many old buildings. In Japanese terms, it’s like having a streetscape resembling Kyoto everywhere you look.

Looking at European cities from the sky, they’re surprisingly brown. That’s because the roofs are thoroughly unified. When I was young I only thought of this as “wow, that’s cool!!”, but now I can infer one reason Europe arrived early at a concept that’s essential today.

That concept is “stopping in place.”

Preserving a streetscape as-is means certain compromises have to be made. You can’t build supertall skyscrapers, and you can’t put up massive plants. But they’ve accepted that compromise.

“Things of value must be left as they are. If necessary, we won’t hesitate to spend money on that.”

Right now, what needs this is the global environment.

Starting from planetary boundaries and continuing to today, academics have defined several Tipping Points, which are monitored and managed so that we can “stop in place,” with the expectation that further innovation will emerge from that.

While America—and Japan, which has followed America’s lead—hesitated, thinking “uh oh, do we really have to stop? isn’t that a hassle? let’s fudge it a bit,” Europe was quick to start steering in various new directions. That framing makes sense when you look at it from this angle.

〈Trash on the streets〉

The area around San Siro after the match was terrible.

Citing such an extreme case isn’t entirely fair, but overall, in terms of dirtiness:

Milan > Berlin >>> Japan

That’s the order.

In particular, regulation of smoking while walking seems lax, or maybe nonexistent, because the amount of cigarette butts in both countries is absurd.

Legally, smoking is supposed to be banned outside of designated areas and private spaces, but my impression is that this is effectively ignored.

This is a bit different from California. (In California, smokers genuinely hide when they smoke.)

〈Summer Berlin is genuinely heaven〉

A morning walk in early September, still. Stepping out with a thin long-sleeve jacket on, the slightly cool air hits your face, the sunlight isn’t too strong but keeps a warm feel, and yet you don’t sweat at all. Does a climate this heavenly really exist???

Milan is a bit hot compared to that. The temperature itself isn’t so different from Japan, but only the humidity is low. Laundry hung to dry indoors dries overnight. What is this.

When I came back to Milan from Berlin I thought, “yeah, it really is hot here” (in fact I sweated under my mask on the train), but thinking about how Japan’s humidity climbs even higher than this made me shudder.

〈The scent of tech〉

In Milan, finding even a hint of tech is a real struggle. However, the abundance of shared scooters and shared bikes is insane. Just glancing around casually, I counted at least 10 companies operating.

Berlin, being an industrial city, makes it easy to find home electronics retailers too. But the city presents itself strongly as a city of art, and the presence of tech is faint here as well.

More than that, I saw the context of sustainability especially among young people, and it had a real presence. Shared scooters have caught on precisely because that’s the kind of tech context they fit into.

Simply having “tech” as your hook is already deeply out of date, it seems, at least in Europe.

〈The abnormality of Tokyo, where the city never ends no matter how far you go〉

In Europe, cities are said to be built around a church at the center. That’s certainly true of regional cities, but not necessarily true in big cities.

Still, there is always a city center, and outside that circumference lies the suburbs (so-called open areas rich in greenery)—that basic structure doesn’t change anywhere.

So how far is that, exactly?

Not just in Europe, but going by the general sense in other countries, it’s about a 20 or 30 minute drive.

In contrast, in Japan—especially Tokyo—even after driving 30 minutes from Marunouchi, heading west you’re still in Shibuya, heading east you’re still at Odaiba, heading north you might only reach Kita-Senju, and heading south you might not even make it to Kawasaki.

Tokyo is abnormal.

〈The strange discomfort of only Japan being hard to move through〉

Moving around Europe was comfortable. There was no need to worry about how you behaved, and to begin with, there were no restrictions on moving between countries.

On that point, right at the very end—returning to Japan—a hassle was waiting for me.

That said, border control measures have been eased considerably (a PCR test is no longer required).

But the app (MySOS) that I installed solely to enter Japan gave me nothing but trouble. I only realized the day before that it needed to be set up several days prior to entry. The instructions didn’t make clear how to import vaccination records, so I had to look it up online. There was no explanation of which screen needed to be displayed upon arrival at quarantine, and displaying it required an internet connection. Every WiFi network at the airport was congested. The mobile network worked but the signal was weak. Oh, 5GHz looks like it might be open. In the end it’s slow, but there’s nothing to do but wait.

I got thoroughly fed up.

If even a Japanese person feels this way, I can only imagine what people from other countries must think of this.

I took a bus from the airport, and it was, in a way, kind of amusing that none of the people who had gotten off international flights were wearing masks while waiting for the bus outdoors (of course, I wasn’t wearing one either).

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/09/1403/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.