Information Bubble

One of the things that I found fascinating about walking the Henro Pilgrimage was the bubble of information that surrounded us as we walked. Because people walk at different speeds, we were constantly passing others or being passed. When this happened, the people involved would usually walk together for a while, discussing where they were from, why they were doing the Pilgrimage, where they were staying and had stayed, interesting people they had met, and other information about the trip.

Ian and I were asked a lot of questions because we were very unusual: for example, we were two foreigners traveling together; we were 15 years different in age; and we were attending the religious services at the temples when we could. When asked the question of what country we were born in we responded accurately by saying England and US respectively. However, the question "Where are you from?" was a little more difficult and we almost always answered "Sendai" since this is our home. This, of course, created a great stir as most Japanese consider anyone from Sendai as by necessity Japanese, and we weren't. As with the other people we met, we answered the various other questions truthfully and as best we could.

This meant that people, both in front of us (those that passed us) and behind us (those we passed) knew a lot about us. These people then met met other people, passed along information about us, so there was a bubble of information that traveled with us but weakened as it got physically further away.

I am sure that there would be a good research paper in this for someone doing work in information processing, sociology, or religion.

There was a Spanish-speaking Ohenro who was using a sheet of translated questions and answers to communicate and a GPS machine rather than a map. We heard about him for a couple of days before we actually met him. At first it was just vague rumors and then the information became more concrete and, as we found out when we met him, more accurate.

The same thing happened with a group that consisted of an Australian man, a Korean woman, and a Japanese man. We heard about them for a day before we met them on a mountain. It turned out that they had not known each other. They had met and decided to stay together for a while.