a foreigner's sense of wonder

"I walk across the park, on a narrow path at its edge, in the autumn sunlight, and feel a foreigner's sense of wonder: the convenience stores placed along the small, shiny road, as if they were just more vending machines; the two-story houses, tidily guarded by their walls, lined up along the narrow streets like salarymen in their business suits waiting in a receiving line for the future. Every trace of the old expunged as efficiently as once the trees and the rice paddies were, here in this place where hope means the West, and tomorrow."

- Grandmothers in Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign by Pico Iyer