JUNE 17, 2026 – In a big city with a sprawling subway or underground public transit system—London, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, New York—the experience is similar: you descend down one large hole in the ground, board a train, ride a few stops, return to the surface of the earth and . . . Regardez! You’ve wound up in a different world from where you started.
What I love about Manhattan, especially—I’m not as familiar with the other boroughs—is that it’s really made up of a gazillion neighborhoods, all inter-connected by streets, sidewalks and subway. The island is a microcosm of the world, wherein each neighborhood is distinct, just as each country on the globe is its own entity, yet if you follow the connectors, you’ll soon realize it’s all one big happy family. Well, I’m not sure of the happy part, but whether you travel up and down the island of Manhattan or circle the planet, you learn to see how everywhere is somewhere and something to someone.
Our destination today, our third day in New York, wasn’t a famous museum or landmark but another Japanese store, MINISO, where our 10-year-old travel companion wanted to inspect the merchandise for a possible “buy.” She is not an overly materialistic kid, and with some earnings and gift money in hand, she consulted with her grandmother about how a portion could be allocated to “special acquisitions” by which to remember New York – 2026.
Across the street from the spacious, well-stock store at Broadway and Broome, stood a line of buildings with recently refurbished façades. Some renovations are still in progress. With these remarkable improvements one can begin to appreciate the architectural grandeur of the area 125 years ago. I could’ve spent the day on an architectural tour of SoHo, but such wasn’t in my destiny. I’d been called on a different mission, and one about which I was not just a little curious.
As we entered MINISO, I felt as though we’d stepped into a gigantic booby trap filled with rows upon racks of soft, smiley made-up stuffed characters designed to make parting with your hard-earned money as pleasant as getting slowly drunk on rum-based ice cream while sampling gourmet macaroons and imported chocolate miniatures.
I had only the vaguest of familiarity with most of the characters, but “Cinnamoroll,” I recognized, along with “Hello Kitty.” What threw me for a loop, however, was a whole panel of stuffed Mr. Potato Heads serving as luggage attachments. It was on the sign over the blasé Mr. Potato Heads that I first noticed the ubiquitous slogan, “Life is for Fun.” Ironically, facing the sign and Mr. Potato Heads was a rack of stuffed characters that had mostly a face and little else in the way of anatomical features; the face, wouldn’t you know, projected stylized anger wholly at odds with the store’s slogan.
Also, I was flabbergasted by the enormous selection of Japanese and Korean varieties of snacking chips in the food section: “Hello Kitty Fried Chicek Flavor Snack” wheat crackers, for instance; “Turtle Chips – Seaweed Flavor”—mmmm, nummy; “Peelable Gummies – PEEL-COH – Surprise Edition” (no doubt); and in running for the gold medal, “Drumstick Shaped Puff Spicy Chicken Ramen Flavor – Korean Style” waffle-like chips.
As I followed the rest of our expeditionary force up and down the aisles, I contemplated the many container ships loaded with “Hello Kitty” imitation purses, stuffed Mr. Potato Head luggage attachments, and the thousands of other trinkets and stuffed “things” and chip bags that filled the store. These were the end products of a long supply chain, a complex design, manufacturing and distribution operations, all of which depended on myriad systems worldwide that together contribute to the world economy, thus providing fortunes for a few, jobs for many, and happy thoughts for all the people who bow to their kids and grandkids’ desires fueled by a constant barrage of marketing signals propagated and amplified by social media and hundred other means . . .
Only on planet earth.
Close on the heels of my thoughts about the global economic roll of Cinnamoroll, not to mention Drumstick Shaped Puff Spicy Chicken [etc.] chips, I asked nearly aloud, “And this is the culture that gave us Shinto Buddhism, elaborate tea ceremony, Seiji Ozawa, Midori, exquisite beauty in art and literature but also Samurai warriors, the Rape of Nanking, and the Bataan Death March?” I felt a pressing desire to understand more about Japan. But just then, I realized it was really a need to understand more about humankind.
Speaking of humankind, we got a large dose of it as we . . . climbed up and down the ancient, grimy staircases inside numerous subway stations; squeezed on and off subway cars; in a cab, crawled through traffic from the UWS to Grand Central Station; and were carried by the surge of rush hour humanity to Track 20 (once the track assignment was posted on the big board inside the main hall) for the train to New Haven. But in each instance, I marveled at how we humans can operate with a good deal of harmony, despite our differences and different objectives, destinations, timetables, apart from an occasional motorist honking at another, I didn’t observe any fist-a-cuffs, hear the exchange of expletives or feel any shoving or pushing. In fact, I experienced just the opposite: people in a rush, yielding to another at a doorway; saying thank you for an ice cream cone; and “excuse me” for accidentally brushing into another traveler.
Plus, there were bonus points for the French soccer fans we met in close quarters on the subway; fans who’d traveled to New York to “get close” to the World Cup, even though they couldn’t afford the out-of-reach tickets to any of the games. They reached out to us—offering up their seats—but I insisted on standing . . . and conversing with one of the fans the best I could in French, not as a grammatically constructed language, on my part mind you, but as a tumble of words from my limited French vocabulary. The young man whose grasp of English was sketchy but superior to my French, showed impressive respect for my attempt. We parted ways with a hearty handshake and a proper exchange of Au revoir!
Humanity scored another goal in Battery Park. There we got to see our granddaughter’s delight (and she, ours) when riding the SeaGlass Carousel at the Battery Conservancy—where young people of all ages can ride large whimsically shaped and colored fish instead of horses; fish that slowly spin as they rise and sink over the rotating platform, all to music reminiscent of an era long past but not yet forgotten.
As we left our hosts’ apartment for the return to Connecticut, Illiana thanked everyone profusely. As we said thank you and good-bye to the building staff, she added, “See you next year!”
What a fine way to conclude our annual sojourn in The City of cities.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
