Western people know many Japanese place names. Osaka, Tokyo, and even for more unsavory reasons, Hiroshima, Nagasaki…
But what many western people don’t know is that these are actually very ordinary names in Japanese.
Hiroshima, for example, means “Wide Island”, and Tokyo means “Capital City” (or something similar).
The fact that the names are in a language we don’t understand makes them sound exotic, but they’re not exotic at all. Just like, for example, “Austin” might sound exotic, but it’s just a random guy’s last name, and “Round Rock” is named for a literal round rock in Brushy Creek.
How much learning another language makes the culture behind that language seem so much more ordinary.
But does everyone want to lose that otherness, that exoticism?