Comment by themaninthedark
18 hours ago
But they aren't representative to some degree.
You definitely won't get 'Southern Charm' or small town feel in NYC. Of course, trying to nail down what exactly is American is gonna be hard to do.
I would definitely not say that if you go to Tokyo you can get the Japanese experience. You get some of it, of course but to say you can get a grasp or even a handful of understanding without ever seeing rice fields and gardens interspersed with houses, beaches with people fishing and immediately turning the catch into sashimi, towns where nothing new has been built since the bubble...
You can't see and feel that in the hustle and bustle, where everyone moves to get away from having neighbors who know all about you, where night is erased by the neon glow.
> You definitely won't get 'Southern Charm' or small town feel in NYC.
This is true but also because the US is geographically and culturally diverse this is impossible in any given city. And that applies equally to none-touristy cities. You're not going to get a broad sense of America from Oklahoma City, either.
The smaller and more homogeneous the country, the easier it is to generalize and get a sense from even a single sample point.