The vanished differences: Gospel Music in Japan.

(Originally posted with photo(s) at http://dlamini-dlamini.blogspot.com/)
Day by day, it gets more difficult to find any meaningful differences between countries and regions among the human family. Here is a stark example.
15th September 2008, I was invited to go and see a friend perform in a gospel choir. "This will be interesting" I thought, given that gospel music originated from a place which seems culturally very different from Japan, where only about 1% of the population is Christian, and monotheism is not a hot topic among the part of the population which practices religion in any form.
With such ideas in mind, I entered the church with my friends. What followed was probably the most animated gospel performance of my life - all 90 minutes of it!
More than this, the congregation was really a Christian congregation, and I could sense the conventions and attitudes that I had experienced while growing up in a Christian family. Indeed, the experience was replete with no-less lively a 10 minute sermon. Amen.
Since the experience, I believe I have no choice but to remove any remaining constructs in my head that try to qualify real differences between one human group from another. I would invite the masses to do so too. Yes, we choose conventions which are not uniform worldwide, but anyone, it seems, can happily adopt the conventions and behaviour of any other group or nation, and they would most likely not manage to remind themselves to lament the loss of anything, after a couple of months
...yes, no exceptions - a Palestinian has the potential to do whatever Israelis consider most honourable, and an Israeli is capable of doing whatever it is that Palestinians consider most honourable.