—We will eventually step into a city, as if entering a memory
—私たちはいつか、記憶に入るように、ある都市に足を踏み入れるだろう
日本从不拒人，但也从不迎人。
它安静地活着，像一面镜子，让人看见生活的结构，也看见自己。
Japan never rejects people, but never welcomes them either.
It lives quietly, like a mirror, allowing people to see the structure of life, as well as themselves.
After breaking through the tourist barrier, I truly entered the core of Osaka for the first time. Tokyo's prosperity inspires awe, but Osaka's feels familiar. It resembles northern Jiangsu and southern Anhui—an Eastern Japanese version of "northern urban life."
The Japanese innate sense of rules and systems is like an invisible wire mesh. Not until I entered Fukuoka did I feel a loosened gap within it. Innovation flows toward freedom; Fukuoka is a transit point for young people's spirits.
It's not a pretended "slow life," but the product of cold, moderation, and life logic working together. If Northeast China stops struggling, perhaps in twenty years, it too will become like Sapporo.
Did anxiety give birth to stability, or did stability restrain anxiety? In their daily lives beside volcanoes, Japanese people have long grown accustomed to coexisting with uncertainty. They are stable, yet anxious.
"The Wind Blows East" series is a collection of cultural observations and comparative cultural essays about various Japanese cities. The author, Fei Zhe, through fieldwork in different regions of Japan, attempts to capture each city's unique temperament and spiritual core, while reflecting on what these cultural traits can teach us about our own culture.